NATAL, Brazil, (MILLAT+APP/AFP) – The latest in a
string of brutal prison massacres involving suspected gang members in Brazil has killed 26 inmates, most of whom were beheaded, officials said Sunday.
The bloodbath erupted Saturday night in the overcrowded Alcacuz
prison in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte.
Similar violence at other jails in Brazil left around 100 inmates
dead in early January.
“Twenty-six deaths have been verified,” the state’s public safety
manager, Caio Bezerra, told a news conference. The authorities had earlier estimated around 30 were killed as they gathered bodies and body parts, he said.
Security forces stormed the prison at dawn and restored order after
14 hours of violence, the local authorities said.
Officials said members of two drug gangs clashed violently after
coming out of different parts of the prison.
One family member said the authorities did not seem to be doing
everything they could — even after she warned the prison director.
“The (prison) director even said he could not do anything” when told
an uprising was looming, said Adriana Feliz, the sister an inmate.
“I told the director they were going to go in and kill everyone in
Pavillion 4,” she added. “So why didn’t they do anything?”
President Michel Temer said on Twitter that the federal government
stood ready to provide “all assistance necessary.”
Separately, officials in the southern state of Parana said 28
prisoners escaped from a jail in the city of Curitiba after inmates blew up a wall and fired on police.