SAO PAULO: Nine inmates were killed, 14 were injured, and dozens escaped in a prison riot on Monday, national news media reported, in the latest example of Brazil’s continuing difficulties maintaining control over its notoriously violent penal system.

According to newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, 106 prisoners escaped the prison in the city of Goiânia, near the capital of Brasilia. Authorities recaptured 27 of the escapees, but the rest remained at large.

Local media said about 106 inmates escaped during the riot, and officials had recaptured 29. The reports said 127 other inmates fled during the violence but returned voluntarily.

One of the nine killed in the mayhem was decapitated, news media reported, sparking 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.

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 neighboring corridors and burned the bodies of those who were killed, authorities said. Firefighters were able to contain the fire.

Authorities confirmed the number of dead, but said identifications had not yet been made, the Brazilian news site G1 reported.

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 São Paulo, the head of Brazil’s prison guard union, Jorimar Bastos, criticised the amount of resources allocated for oversight at the Goiânia prison, saying only five guards were assigned to watch over 900 prisoners.

Exactly one year ago, a prison riot at the Anisio Jobim Penitentiary Complex in Amazonas state caused 56 deaths. A day later, four prisoners were killed at the Puraqueuqara Prison Unit in the same state.

Agencies