At least 57 inmates died, 16 of whom were decapitated, in a prison riot that broke out on Monday morning in the northern Brazilian state of Para – the latest in a series of deadly clashes, Telegraph reports.
Authorities said the riot involved rival criminal gangs who took at least two penitentiary officers hostage as they battled one another.
As Brazil’s incarcerated population has surged eight-fold in three decades to around 750,000 inmates – the world’s third-highest tally – its prison gangs have come to wield vast power that reaches far beyond prison walls.
Prisoners belonging to the Comando Classe A gang set fire to a cell containing inmates from the rival Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, gang, Para’s state government said in a statement.
Most of the dead died in the fire, they said, while two guards were taken hostage, but later released.
“It was a targeted act,” state prison director Jarbas Vasconcelos said in the statement, adding there was no prior intelligence that suggested an attack would take place.
“The aim was to show that it was a settling of accounts between the two gangs.”
