According to officials, a massacre at a female prison in Honduras resulted in at least 41 deaths by burning, shooting, or machete attack. Violent confrontations between rival gangs prompted the fire that destroyed a portion of the facility.
Tuesday, June 20, saw the start of the riots.
The disturbance on Tuesday at the prison in Tamara, a town approximately 50 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of the capital of Honduras, was 'organised by maras (street gangs) with the knowledge and participation of security forces,' according to President Xiomara Castro.
After violent confrontations between rival gangs, 41 women are burned, shot, or hacked to death with machetes in a riot at a female prison in Honduras.
Sandra Rodrguez Vargas, the assistant commissioner for the prison system in Honduras, reported that the attackers'removed' guards from the institution around 8 a.m. on Tuesday, though none appeared to have been hurt. They then unlocked the gates to a nearby cell block and started killing women there. They set a fire, which turned the bunks into twisted piles of metal and blackened the cell walls.
After violent confrontations between rival gangs, 41 women are burned, shot, or hacked to death with machetes in a riot at a female prison in Honduras.
According to Yuri Mora, the spokesperson for the national police investigation office in Honduras, 26 of the victims were burned to death while the other victims were shot or stabbed. At least seven prisoners were receiving medical care at a hospital in Tegucigalpa.
Since 2017, when girls at a shelter for problematic teens in Guatemala set fire to beds to protest rapes and other mistreatment at the overcrowded institution, the riot appears to be the worst in a female correctional facility in Central America. 41 girls died from the smoke and fire.
In Honduras, the Comayagua Penitentiary saw the worst prison disaster in a century in 2012 when 361 inmates perished in a fire that may have been started by a match, cigarette, or other open flame.
According to Johanna Paola Soriano Euceda, who was waiting outside the mortuary in Tegucigalpa for information regarding her mother, Maribel Euceda, and sister, Karla Soriano, there were numerous signs before to Tuesday's catastrophe. Both were being housed in the same area as inmates who had already been convicted while they were on trial for narcotics trafficking.
Soriano Euceda claimed that they had informed her on Sunday that "they" (Barrio 18 members) were out of control and constantly fighting. That was our final conversation.
Although they conceded that gangs had basically taken control of some areas of the jail, officials nonetheless referred to the deaths as "terrorist acts."
The chief of the prison system, Julissa Villanueva, suggested that the recent attempts by authorities to clamp down on illegal activity inside prison walls were the likely cause of the incident and described Tuesday's violence as a reaction to actions "we are taking against organised crime."
Following the riot, Villanueva declared in a televised speech, "We won't back down."
In the nation's prisons, where convicts frequently establish their own laws and trade in illegal commodities, gangs exercise broad power.
Additionally, it appears that they were able to smuggle in weapons like rifles and other items, which is a concern in Honduran jails.
According to Joaquin Mejia, a human rights specialist from Honduras, "the issue is to prevent people from smuggling in drugs, grenades, and firearms." "Today's events demonstrate that they were unable to do that," I said.
The awful process of trying to identify the victims, some of which were severely charred, continued in the meantime.
According to the forensic teams that are removing the dead, there are 41,' stated Mora.
There are many dead, 41 already, claimed Azucena Martinez, whose daughter was also being detained there. We have no idea if any of our kin are also in there—dead.
