Brazil prison riot sees inmate reportedly decapitated, eight others dead and more than 100 on the run
Updated
Nine inmates were killed, 14 were injured and dozens escaped in a prison riot, in the latest example of Brazil's continuing difficulties maintaining control over its notoriously violent penal system.
One of the nine killed in the mayhem was decapitated, local media reported.
According to newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo, 106 prisoners escaped the prison in the city of Goiania, near the capital Brasilia.
Authorities recaptured 27 of the escapees, but the rest remained at large.
Reports said 127 other inmates fled during the violence but returned voluntarily.
Authorities confirmed the number of dead, but said identifications had not yet been made, news site G1 reported.
Officials said the violence at the Colonia Agroindustrial prison in the Aparecida de Goiania Complex apparently erupted when inmates from one cellblock invaded three others where prisoners from rival gangs are housed.
The attackers set mattresses on fire when they entered the neighbouring corridors and burned the bodies of those who were killed, authorities said.
Firefighters were able to contain the fire.
The violence sparked memories of a prison riot that occurred one year ago today in the Amazon in which 56 people died, several of whom were decapitated and thrown over prison walls.
That riot, which was rooted in a long-standing gang rivalry, came at the beginning of a January marred by widespread prison violence, with 130 prisoners dying in the first 20 days of 2017.
Brazil's prisons, which suffer endemic violence, are often severely overcrowded.
Rights group call prison conditions medieval, with food scarce and cells often so packed inmates have no space to lie down.
In comments on Monday to newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil's prison guard union boss Jorimar Bastos criticised the amount of resources allocated for oversight at the Goiania prison, saying only five guards were assigned to watch over 900 prisoners.
Reuters/AP
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, prisons-and-punishment, unrest-conflict-and-war, brazil
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