Relatives of inmates wait in misery outdoors the doorway to the ladies’s jail in Tamara, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

Elmer Martinez/AP

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Elmer Martinez/AP

Relatives of inmates wait in misery outdoors the doorway to the ladies’s jail in Tamara, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, June 20, 2023.

Elmer Martinez/AP

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A grisly riot at a ladies’s jail in Honduras Tuesday left at the very least 41 ladies lifeless, most burned to loss of life, in violence the nation’s president blamed on “mara” road gangs that always wield broad energy inside penitentiaries.

Twenty-six of the victims had been burned to loss of life and the rest shot or stabbed on the jail in Tamara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, stated Yuri Mora, the spokesman for Honduras’ nationwide police investigation company. At least seven inmates had been being handled at a Tegucigalpa hospital.

“The forensic teams that are removing bodies confirm they have counted 41,” stated Mora.

Video clips proven by the federal government from contained in the jail confirmed a number of pistols and a heap of machetes and different bladed weapons that had been discovered after the riot.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro stated the riot was “planned by maras with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities.”

“I am going to take drastic measures!” Castro wrote in her social media accounts.

Prisoners belonging to the dreaded Barrio 18 gang reportedly burst right into a cell block and shot different inmates or set them afire.

Relatives awaiting information about inmates gathered outdoors the morgue in Tegucigalpa. They confirmed that inmates within the jail had instructed them they lived in worry of the Barrio 18 gang.

Johanna Paola Soriano Euceda was ready for information about her mom Maribel Euceda, and sister, Karla Soriano. Both had been on trial for drug trafficking, however had been held in the identical space as convicted prisoners.

Soriano Euceda stated that they had instructed 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 group of dozens of anxious, indignant family members gathered outdoors the jail, situated in a rural space about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the capital.

“We are here dying of anguish, of pain … we don’t have any information,” stated Salomón García, whose daughter is an inmate on the facility.

Azucena Martinez, whose daughter was additionally being held on the jail, stated “there are a lot of dead, 41 already. We don’t know if our relatives are also in there, dead.”

Julissa Villanueva, head of the nation’s jail system, advised the riot began due to current makes an attempt by authorities to crack down on illicit exercise inside prisons and known as Tuesday’s violence a response to strikes “we are taking against organized crime.”

“We will not back down,” Villanueva stated in a televised deal with after the riot.

Gangs wield broad management contained in the nation’s prisons, the place inmates typically 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 drawback in Honduran prisons.

“The issue is to prevent people from smuggling in drugs, grenades and firearms,” stated Honduran human rights professional Joaquin Mejia. “Today’s events show that they have not been able to do that.”

The riot seems to be the worst tragedy at a feminine detention heart in Central America since 2017, when ladies at a shelter for troubled youths in Guatemala set hearth to mattresses to protest rapes and different mistreatment on the badly overcrowded establishment. The ensuing smoke and hearth killed 41 ladies.

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 probably attributable to a match, cigarette or another open flame.

Tuesday’s riot could 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. While El Salvador’s crackdown on gangs has given rise to rights violations, it has additionally proved immensely well-liked in a rustic lengthy terrorized by road gangs.