Prisoners die as wave of rioting hits jails in Honduras

AT LEAST 16 prisoners have died during fighting inside a juvenile detention centre in Honduras, just two days after rioting at another jail killed 18 inmates.

The latest bloody violence occurred at a maximum security prison in the municipality of El Porvenir, 72 miles from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

The rioting was confirmed by Jose Coello, spokesman for the National Interagency Security Force, an entity formed from the military and the National Police to deal with the recent unrest in Honduras’s prisons. The task force was put in charge of managing the country’s 29 prisons and juvenile detention centres when the federal government declared a state of emergency throughout the National Prison System.

Civilian officials in the system were suspended, and the special commission will seek to root out corruption and violence in prisons. Digna Aguilar, a spokeswoman for the prison system, said she could not comment on what happened on Sunday.

“We are counting the deceased and it would be irresponsible to give an exact number,” she said.

Prisoners at the detention centre were reportedly having a meal when several other inmates armed with knives attacked fellow detainees. The attack also wounded a dozen inmates, one of whom died later. The outburst came after inmates, including some armed with guns, battled each other on Friday at a prison in the city of Tela, leaving 18 dead and 16 wounded.

Before Sunday’s bloodshed, the Observatory of Violence of the National Autonomous University of Honduras had counted a total of 27 killings in three separate incidents in 2019.