Brazil brutal prison massacre leaves 31 dead

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A brutal prison massacre in Brazil, the second in a week, killed 31 people on Friday as inmates beheaded and mutilated fellow prisoners in a jail in the northern state of Roraima.

The violence broke out at the Monte Cristo penitentiary, when inmates from one drugs gang broke the locks of their cells and invaded a wing housing prisoners from a rival gang, Roraima's secretary of justice Uziel Castro said.

"No shots were fired. The victims were killed with sharp objects and home-made weapons,” Castro noted. “There are many decapitated bodies, many limbs," he also said, adding that many had their heads hacked off, while some even had their hearts exposed.

Video grab showing inmates loading onto a van corpses of inmates killed during a riot in the PAMC (Agricola de Monte Cristo Penitentiary) in Roraima state, northern Brazil on January 6, 2017. /CFP Photo

The state government said the situation was now "under control." Earlier, authorities said 33 inmates had been killed in the violence.

Friday’s massacre followed another one in Manaus, in the neighboring state of Amazonas, from Sunday to Monday, which resulted in 56 deaths.

In October, the Monte Cristo penitentiary had already seen another riot that left 10 people dead.

Police car drives to the Monte Cristo, Roraima state's largest penitentiary, where around 33 people were killed during a riot, Roraima, Brazil, January 6, 2017. /CFP Photo

Deadly prison riots have intensified in Brazil since a truce broke down in July between the country's two largest drug gangs, the PCC and the Red Command (CV).

Prisons in the country, and especially in the north near the borders with top cocaine producers Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, are often under the de facto control of drug gangs, and turf wars on the outside are also fought out among inmates on the inside.

Overcrowding exacerbates the problem, activists say.

According to the daily O Globo, the Monte Cristo penitentiary was designed to house 700 inmates but actually contained 1,475.

(Source: AFP, Xinhua)

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