TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A grisly riot at a girls’s jail in Honduras Tuesday left not less than 41 girls lifeless, most burned to dying, in violence the nation’s president blamed on “mara” road gangs that usually wield broad energy inside penitentiaries.
Most victims had been burned however there additionally had been stories of inmates shot on the jail in Tamara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, mentioned Yuri Mora, the spokesman for Honduras’ nationwide police investigation company.
At the least seven feminine inmates had been being handled at a Tegucigalpa hospital for gunshot and knife wounds, staff there mentioned.
“The forensic groups which can be eradicating our bodies affirm they’ve counted 41,” mentioned Mora.
Native media interviewed one injured inmate outdoors the hospital who mentioned prisoners belonging to the dreaded Barrio 18 gang burst right into a cell block and shot different inmates or set them afire.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro mentioned the riot was “deliberate by maras with the data and acquiescence of safety authorities.”
“I’m going to take drastic measures!” Castro wrote in her social media accounts.
Dozens of anxious, indignant kinfolk gathered outdoors the jail; positioned in a rural space about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the capital.
“We’re right here dying of anguish, of ache … we have no info,” mentioned Salomón García, whose daughter is an inmate on the facility.
Azucena Martinez, whose daughter was additionally being held on the jail, mentioned “there are lots of lifeless, 41 already. We do not know if our kinfolk are additionally in there, lifeless.”
Julissa Villanueva, head of the nation’s jail system, recommended the riot began due to current makes an attempt by authorities to crack down on illicit exercise inside prisons and referred to as Tuesday’s violence a response to strikes “we’re taking towards organized crime.”
“We is not going to again down,” Villanueva mentioned in a televised handle after the riot.
Gangs wield broad management contained in the nation’s prisons, the place inmates usually set their very own guidelines and promote prohibited items.
They had been additionally apparently in a position to smuggle in weapons and different weapons, a recurring downside in Honduran prisons.
“The difficulty is to stop individuals from smuggling in medication, grenades and firearms,” mentioned Honduran human rights knowledgeable Joaquin Mejia. “Right now’s occasions present that they haven’t been ready to do this.”
The riot seems to be the worst tragedy at a feminine detention middle in Central America since 2017, when women at a shelter for troubled youths in Guatemala set fireplace to mattresses to protest rapes and different mistreatment on the badly overcrowded establishment. The following smoke and fireplace killed 41 women.
The worst jail catastrophe in a century additionally occurred in Honduras, in 2012 on the Comayagua penitentiary, the place 361 inmates died in a fireplace presumably attributable to a match, cigarette or another open flame.
Tuesday’s riot might enhance the strain on Honduras to emulate the drastic zero-tolerance, no-privileges prisons set in up in neighboring El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele. Whereas El Salvador’s crackdown on gangs has given rise to rights violations, it has additionally proved immensely in style in a rustic lengthy terrorized by road gangs.
—— AP writers Elmer Martínez in Tamara, Honduras and Maria Verza in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report