At least 41 people were killed on Tuesday at a women’s prison in Honduras, where violent clashes between rival gangs sparked a fire that tore through part of the facility, police said.
The deadly violence occurred at a prison about 25km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, said police spokesman Edgardo Barahona, who put the “preliminary” death toll at 41 women.
It was unclear if they were all inmates.
Photo: Reuters
Five other women were injured and taken to hospital, Barahona said.
Hundreds of relatives of incarcerated women gathered outside the detention facility awaiting information about their loved ones.
“We don’t know who the victims are,” one visibly distraught man said.
Heavily armed soldiers and police were seen entering and guarding the prison, while teams of firefighters were also present.
Delma Ordonez, who represents inmates’ relatives, said that members of a gang — apparently the Barrio 18 — had entered the cell of a rival group and set it on fire.
That part of the prison was “completely destroyed” in the blaze, Ordonez said.
The CEFAS correctional facility in Tamara held about 900 inmates, she said.
Most of the women died in the fire, while some bodies were riddled with bullets, prosecutors’ office a spokesman Yuri Mora told reporters.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro wrote on Twitter that she was “shocked” by the “monstrous murder of women in CEFAS by gangs in full view and tolerance of security authorities,” and expressed solidarity with grieving family members.
A state of emergency was announced and Castro said she would “take drastic measures” to hold security leaders to account.
On Tuesday night, she dismissed Ramon Sabillon as minister of security, replacing him with Gustavo Sanchez, who was serving as the director of the national police.
Sabillon was reassigned to the Honduran Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Sandra Rodriguez Vargas, the assistant commissioner for Honduras’ prison system, said the attackers had “removed” guards at the facility — none appeared to have been injured — at about 8am, and then opened the gates to an adjoining cell block and began massacring women there.
There were ample warnings ahead of the tragedy, said Johanna Paola Soriano Euceda, who was waiting outside the morgue in Tegucigalpa for news about her mother, Maribel Euceda, and sister, Karla Soriano.
Both were on trial for drug trafficking, but were held in the same area as convicted prisoners.
Soriano Euceda said they had told her on Sunday that “they [Barrio 18 members] were out of control, they were fighting with them all the time. That was the last time we talked.”
Another woman, who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisals, said she was waiting for news about a friend, Alejandra Martinez, 26, who was been held on robbery charges.
“She told me the last time I saw her on Sunday that the [Barrio] 18 people had threatened them, that they were going to kill them if they didn’t turn over a relative,” she said.
Officials described the killings as a “terrorist act,” but also acknowledged that gangs essentially had ruled some parts of the prison.
Julissa Villanueva, head of the prison system, said that the riot might have started because of recent attempts by authorities to crack down on illicit activity inside prison walls and called the violence a reaction to moves “we are taking against organized crime.”
“We will not back down,” Villanueva said in a televised address after the riot.
Additional reporting by AP
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS