STREETS were flooded with the stench of death in Ecuador's violence-hit economic capital after its main morgue broke down.
Over 200 rotting corpses of murder victims - most unclaimed and unidentified - were stuffed inside the refrigerated container when it failed in Guayaquil, a city overwhelmed by warring gangs.
Witnesses reported that the forensic morgue had become heavily overcrowded and collapsed under the weight of the corpses on Thursday.
Amid high temperatures of 30C, body parts were said to be overflowing from the containers and the liquids of decay leaking through cracks, reports.
Government officials quickly attempted to remedy the horrifying situation and later claimed the malfunctioning refrigerated container had been repaired.
In the last months, two morgues that housed the bodies of homicide victims stopped working - leaving just one operational in the city.
Drone footage from above the Forensic Medicine Service centre showed staff in hazmat suits surrounding a decrepit-looking refrigerated container with its doors open.
They can be seen collecting body parts that had fallen out of their forensic covers and storing them in body bags.
The clips also showed the staff spraying the entrance with strong products to seemingly neutralise the putrid liquids seeping out of it.
The disaster has caused immense pain for those who have loved ones inside.
Daniel, who only gave his first name, has been asking for months for the body of his murdered daughter to be released.
"They don’t see our pain, we won’t even be able to hold a wake over her body, because it has been here for too long,” he told El Pais.
Another distraught parent, Margarita Pardo, has been waiting weeks for the body of her son to be returned to her.
“The [morgue] say they are suffering a health crisis,” she told La Tribuna, adding that she was told the body of her son is “rotting.”
“They told us that there is no delivery date, because they do not know when they are going to fix the container, and that no one is going to enter there until they fix it,” Margarita added.
In the past week alone, the morgue took in the bodies of 40 people killed by violence in Guayaquil, a port city home to 2.7 million that recorded a total of 3,762 violent deaths in 2023.
Most of the deaths are the result of clashes between gangs fighting over territory and drug distribution routes after violence erupted across Ecuador earlier this year.
Prison massacres have also led to a build up of charred human body parts that are unable to be identified that are helping to overwhelm the morgue.
The former head of forensic medicine at the Guayaquil morgue, Juan Montenegro, accused the morgue of not properly cooling the bodies.
Inside, he said that the decomposition process is often accelerated and bad odours spread and putrid liquids seep untreated into pipes.
"I don't understand why they haven't sent the bodies to a mass grave in a timely manner, donated them to the universities, or why they haven't handed them over to the relatives, who are on the street demanding the bodies," he said.
