Grisly gang fight kills dozens in Brazil prison

SÃO PAULO—More than 30 inmates were killed, many of them mutilated, in Brazil’s second prison riot this week as drug gangs based in overcrowded prisons fight over cocaine-smuggling routes.

The state government of Roraima in northern Brazil said 33 inmates were killed early Friday morning in a prison in the state capital of Boa Vista.

“Many of the dead have been decapitated and had their hearts and guts ripped out,” said the state’s justice secretary, Uziel de Castro Jr., who witnessed the scene inside the prison following the violence.

Friday’s deaths brought the total number of inmates killed in riots over the past three months to about 140, according to figures provided by Brazil’s Justice Ministry.

The massacre comes days after 60 inmates were killed in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus during a 17-hour riot that ended Monday, the deadliest prison uprising in Brazil since the massacre of 111 inmates in São Paulo’s Carandiru prison in 1992.

 

 

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Featured image is courtesy of Reuters.