(CNN) — At least 10 prisoners were killed Saturday in Brazil’s fifth deadly prison riot since January 1.

The latest riot happened at the Alcaçuz prison, the largest prison in the state of Rio Grande do Norte in the northeast, according to the state government.

Police and special military police forces were deployed to the prison, where the riot was still underway Saturday night, said Juliska Azevedo, a spokeswoman for the government.

The riot broke out after a fight between rival gangs PCC (First Capital Command) and Sindicato do Crime do RN (Crime Union of Rio Grande do Norte).

The São Paulo-based PCC was involved in the other fatal riots this year, authorities said.

This year’s wave of prison violence started January 1 when at least 56 prisoners were killed at the Anisio Jobim Penitentiary Complex in Manaus.

Victims were decapitated and their bodies thrown over the prison wall. Sergio Fontes, the public safety secretary for the state of Amazonas, said the riot started over control of the drug trade in prison.

As that riot was being quelled, four inmates were killed January 2 at the Prison Unit of Puraquequara in Manaus.

In the neighboring Roraima state, 33 people were killed January 6 at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo

On January 8, four prisoners killed in the Desembargador Raimundo Vidal Pessoa public jail in Manaus.

Prisoners escaped from other prison units during the unrest.

Jose Carvalho da Silva, the interim director of the Anísio Jobim Penitentiary Complex, was removed Tuesday after the deadly riot and corruption allegations by two inmates.

Brazilian President Michel Teme and Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes recently announced the creation of a new National Security Plan to improve the prison system.

Brazil has the fourth-largest prison population in the world, with more than 622,000 people behind bars, according to its justice ministry.

Many prisons are badly overcrowded. The Alcaçuz prison has the capacity for 620 inmates but currently houses 1,083. </s> A dispute between inmates at a prison in Feira de Santana, Brazil, sparked a violent 18-hour riot that left eight people dead on May 24.

Dozens of inmates were found dead at three different prisons in the capital of Brazil’s northern Amazonas state on Monday.

The deaths come a day after 15 inmates died during fighting between prisoners at a fourth prison in the same city.

The Amazonas state prison agency said the 40 prisoners, all found dead in Manaus on Monday, showed signs of asphyxiation or choking.

Prison staff had only discovered the victims while making routine checks of the four different facilities, according to the BBC.

Since the grisly discoveries, a task force has been sent to “control the disturbances”.

More inmates suffered injuries during fighting on Monday.

On Sunday, 15 inmates were killed during a riot at Manaus’ Anisio Jobim Prison Complex, where 56 prisoners died two years earlier.

At least 25 of the victims were found in the Antonio Trindade Penal Institute near Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, where all four prisons are located, according to AFP.

Another five were killed at the Provisional Detention Centre for Men, and six died at the Puraquequara Prison Unit. Authorities had initially put the official number of dead at 42 but later revised the number to 40 without explanation.

Local authorities said prisoners began fighting among themselves before noon on Sunday, and security reinforcements were rushed in and managed to regain control of the prison within 45 minutes.

Officials said the prisoners had used sharpened toothbrushes as shanks, and others had been strangled to death.

Prison visitors witnessed the violence, describing it as chaotic.

“It was total chaos,” said the mother of one inmate. Speaking to The Rio Times, she asked not to be named.

“Everyone started to run, and everyone was pounding on the cell gates, at the doors and running down the corridors.”

Little information has been released by Brazilian officials about Monday’s killings.

Brazil’s justice and public security ministry said it was sending a federal task force to help local officials handle the situation.

“I just spoke with (Justice) Minister Sergio Moro who is already sending a prison intervention team to the state of Amazonas so that he can help us in this moment of crisis and a problem that is national: the problem of prisons,” Amazonas state Governor Wilson Lima said.

Several drug-trafficking and other criminal gangs in Brazil run much of their day-to-day business from prisons, where they often have wide sway.

Brazil has the world’s third largest prison population. In April this year the number was at 712,305 inmates. The number of inmates is nearly double the capacity of the prisons, which is estimated to be about 368,049 inmates.

Overcrowding in the prisons has fuelled riots and violence within prison walls.

Attempts at prison reform have been met with strong resistance from inside and outside the prisons.

The recent violence echoes a similar bloody outbreak in early 2017 when more than 120 inmates were gruesomely slain by other prisoners. The attacks, in which many victims had their heads cut off or their hearts and intestines ripped out, were carried out between rival crime gangs in prisons in Brazil’s northern states.

The 2017 slayings were largely gang-related, prompting authorities to increase efforts to separate factions and frequently transfer prisoners.

Authorities have not yet been able to determine whether a gang war is behind the latest spate of killings.

Mr Moro was forced to send a federal task force to help tame violence in Ceara state in January that local officials said was ordered by gang leaders angered by plans to impose tighter controls in the state’s prisons. </s> At least 56 inmates have been killed after fighting started a riot at a prison in the state of Amazonas in northern Brazil.

Officials said the death toll included several who were beheaded or dismembered in the worst bloodshed at a Brazilian prison since 1992.

The riot apparently grew out of a fight between two of the country's biggest crime gangs over control of prisons and drug routes in northern Brazil.

Amazonas authorities initially reported 60 dead but on Monday afternoon the state public security secretary's office reduced that figure to 56.

State public security secretary Sergio Fontes said some inmates escaped from the Anisio Jobim penitentiary complex in Manaus during the riot, but he did not say how many. He said 40 had been recaptured.

There were 1,224 inmates in the prison, which was built to hold 592, Mr Fontes said. The prison is run by a private company that is paid according to the number of inmates.

Twelve prison guards were held hostage by the inmates, though none was injured during the riot that began on Sunday afternoon and ended on Monday morning.

Mr Fontes confirmed many of the dead had been beheaded while Judge Luis Carlos Valois, who negotiated the end of the riot with inmates, said he saw many bodies that had been quartered.

It was the largest death toll during a Brazilian prison riot since the killing of 111 inmates by police officers in the Carandiru penitentiary in Sao Paulo in 1992.

Two other prisons in Manaus also reported riots on Monday.

At one, 87 prisoners escaped, including an inmate who posted a picture of himself on Facebook as he left.

Amazonas police were investigating whether there was a link between the violence at the three prisons. By evening, state police said the situation was stable in all three prisons.

Mr Fontes said the inmates at Anisio Jobim made few demands to end the riot, saying that hinted at a killing spree organised by members of a local gang, the Family of the North, against those of the Sao Paulo-based First Command of the Capital.

The secretary said officers found a hole in a prison wall through which weapons entered the building.

A policeman was wounded in exchange of gunfire with the inmates. Several firearms were found when police searched the prison after the riot.

Jose Vicente da Silva, a former national public security secretary, said the incidents in Manaus were a result of Brazil's severe recession and poor management of the prison system.

He added: "Since 2014 homicides in prisons of Amazonas are double the national average and last year they cut their public security budget by 50% due to austerity measures. This incident is a repetition in a bigger scale." </s> About 60 people have been killed in a bloody prison riot sparked by a war between rival drug gangs in the Amazon jungle city of Manaus, officials said Monday, in some of the worst violence in years in Brazil's overcrowded penitentiary system.

Sergio Fontes, head of security for Amazonas state, told a news conference that the death toll could rise as authorities get a clearer idea of the scale of the rebellion sparked by a fight between rival drug gangs.

Manaus' Em Tempo newspaper reported that several of the dead had their decapitated bodies thrown over the prison wall.

The riot began late Sunday and was brought under control by around 7 a.m. local time Monday, Fontes said. Authorities were still counting the prisoners to determine how many had escaped, he added.

International watchdog groups sharply criticize Brazil for its prison system, as overcrowding is the norm and deadly riots routinely break out.
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The massacre was the latest clash between inmates aligned with the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command (PCC) drug gang, Brazil's most powerful, and a local Manaus criminal group known as the North Family.

The Manaus-based gang is widely believed to be attacking PCC inmates at the behest of the Rio de Janeiro-based Red Command (CV) drug gang, Brazil's second largest.

Security analysts have said that a truce that held for years between the PCC and CV was broken last year, resulting in months of deadly prison battles between the gangs and sparking fears that chaos will spread to other prisons.

In the latest riot, a group of inmates exchanged gunfire with police and held 12 prison guards hostage late on Sunday in the largest prison in Manaus, an industrial city on the banks of the Amazon River, Globo TV reported.

Fontes said that 74 prisoners were taken hostage during the riot, with some executed and some released.

A video posted on the website of the Manaus-based newspaper Em Tempo showed dozens of bloodied and mutilated bodies piled atop each other on the prison floor as other inmates milled about.

Brazil's prison system is precariously overcrowded and conditions in many institutions are horrific. That has sparked a rash of deadly riots in recent years.

Sunday's riot was the deadliest in years. A 1992 rebellion at the Carandiru prison in Sao Paulo state saw 111 inmates killed, nearly all of them by police as they retook the jail. </s> At least 42 prisoners have been found dead at four prisons in the northern Amazon jungle city of Manaus on Monday, authorities said.

The deaths came one day after 15 inmates were killed in clashes between rival prison gangs in the same city.

The Amazonas state government said in a statement that the victims appeared to have been killed by "asphyxiation." It added that federal authorities had dispatched reinforcements to the state to boost security.

On Sunday, 15 inmates were killed when fighting broke out at the Anisio Jobim Prison Complex in Manaus. Some of the 42 prisoners killed on Monday were also discovered at the facility, while the rest were found at three other jails.

Severe overcrowding is a huge problem in Brazil's prison system, which is plagued by drug violence and riots. In 2017, more than 120 prisoners died during three weeks of clashes between rival prison factions in northern Brazil.

Brazil has one of the world's largest prison populations. According to official statistics, there were more than 700,000 inmates as of 2016 — double the capacity of the nation's jails.

"Overcrowding and understaffing make it impossible for prison authorities to maintain control within many prisons, leaving detainees vulnerable to violence and recruitment into gangs," Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.



Every evening, DW sends out a selection of the day's news and features. Sign up here. </s> At least 52 people have been killed in a prison riot in Brazil which saw rival gangs battle for five hours, officials say.

Gang members from one prison block invaded another part of Altamira jail in Pará state, local media reported.

Officials giving a news conference said 16 of the dead were decapitated. Other reports said part of the prison was set on fire, suffocating many.

Two prison officers who were taken hostage have since been freed.

The violence began at around 07:00 local time (10:00 GMT), and ended at around noon, officials said.

Video reported to be from the prison carried by Brazilian media showed smoke billowing from at least one prison building, while another clip appeared to show inmates walking around on the rooftops.

The two rival gangs involved have not been named by authorities.

Violence in Brazilian prisons is not uncommon. The country has the world’s third-largest prison population of some 700,000 people, and overcrowding is a widespread problem.

Clashes between rival gangs are frequent, as are riots.

In May, 40 people were killed on the same day in four different prisons in Manaus in Amazonas state – a day after 15 died in prison fights in the area. </s> At least 56 inmates at a prison complex were killed in Brazil’s Amazonas state during a riot caused by rival drug gangs, which began on Sunday, Reuters reported on Monday. A total of 184 prisoners escaped during the violence at the Anisio Jobim complex, but around 40 were recaptured by Monday. A dozen security guards were taken hostage during the riot, but none were harmed.

Security chief for Amazonas Sergio Fontes said many of those killed were decapitated, with several bodies being thrown over the prison walls during the riot. Most of those killed were members of the Sao Paulo-based First Capital Command drug gang, he added.

Other officers said members of the gang were being targeted by the Manaus-based North Family, allegedly on the orders of Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command drug group. The violence was brought under control by security forces 17 hours after it began.

Fontes called the riot “the biggest massacre” ever committed at a prison in the state, according to BBC. “During the negotiations [to end the riot], the prisoners had almost no demands,” he said. “Their only request was to not be mistreated by the police when they came in.”

Several firearms and tunnels were found in the prison complex after the riot ended. Officers said another riot at a separate complex was quickly brought under control by security personnel.

Brazil’s penitentiary system has frequently been criticised by rights groups for overcrowding and excessive violence. The Anisio Jobim complex currently houses 2,230 inmates, despite having a capacity for only 590. The director of Pastoral Carceraria, a Catholic centre monitoring prison conditions, said such massacres were a daily occurrence in the country. “Our prisons were built to annihilate, torture and kill.”

The riot took place a week after Brazilian President Michel Temer announced a $366 million (approximately Rs 2,494.83 crore) package for states to improve prison infrastructure. </s> At least 33 more inmates killed in northern Brazil, just days after similar prison riots killed 60.

At least 33 inmates have been killed by their rivals at a prison in northern Brazil, just days after a similar riot by warring gangs erupted at other prisons.

Friday's statement from the justice secretary said the prisoners died overnight at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo in the northern state of Roraima.

The violence did not appear to be an all-out riot but rather a rapid early morning attack by one group of inmates against another, lasting less than an hour, a local government spokeswoman told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Most of the killings were carried out with knives, she said. No firearms have been found inside the prison so far.

"Authorities in northern Brazil are saying the situation is now under control and that no body escaped in this occasion," Al Jazeera's Daniel Schweimler, reporting from the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, said.

A police statement said officers, including a heavily armed military-like riot squad, had been deployed to the Monte Cristo prison.

The apparent bloodshed comes just days after rebellions in other two prisons left 60 dead in the neighbouring state of Amazonas.

One institution suffered the country's worst prison bloodshed since 1992, with half of the 56 slain beheaded and several others also dismembered. In another of the riots, four prisoners died.

READ MORE: 56 killed, many beheaded, in grisly Brazil prison riot

A total of 184 inmates escaped from Amazonas prisons in the disturbances. As of Thursday afternoon, only 65 had been recaptured.

Authorities say that in Amazonas, the local Family of the North gang attacked members of Sao Paulo-based First Command, Brazil's biggest criminal organization.

The gangs are believed to be fighting for the control of prisons and drug routes in the northern part of the country, which borders Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and the Guianas.

Brazil has the fourth largest prison population behind the United States, China and Russia.

Horrific conditions and inter-gang violence are seen in many facilities, some of which are essentially run by drug gang leaders who continue to run their criminal enterprises on the outside despite being locked up.

In October, a riot at the Agricultural Penitentiary of Monte Cristo, the same where disturbances were reported on Friday, left 18 dead. </s> At least 40 prisoners were killed in four jails in northern Brazil on Monday over an apparent gang dispute, in the latest wave of violence to rock the country’s severely overpopulated and deadly prison system.

The latest incidents brought back memories of the mass butchery in January 2017 in Brazil north and northeastern prisons, resulting in 150 deaths. Then prison gangs backed by Brazil’s two largest drug factions – the First Capital Command and the Red Command – butchered one another.

The latest victims in Amazonas prisons appeared to have been killed by “asphyxiation,” the state government said in a statement. And it happened a day after 15 people were killed in one of the prisons.

Officials had initially put the number of dead at 42, but later revised the number to 40.

At least 25 of the victims were found in the Antonio Trindade Penal Institute near Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, where all four prisons are located.

No guns or knives were used in the killings, which prison officials said appeared to have been sparked by a “rift between prisoners who belonged to the same criminal group and were involved in drug trafficking in the state.”

The federal government has dispatched reinforcements to boost security in the jails.

“I just spoke with (Justice) Minister Sergio Moro, who is sending a prison intervention team to Amazonas so that he can help us in this moment of crisis,” state Governor Wilson Lima said.

An investigation launched into Sunday’s mass killing at the Anisio Jobim Penal Complex, in which some of the prisoners were stabbed with sharpened toothbrushes during visiting hours, has been widened to include Monday’s deaths.

Four of those killed in the latest violence were found at the Anisio Jobim jail, which was also the scene of a prison rebellion that lasted almost 20 hours and left 56 people dead in January 2017.

Another five were killed at the Provisional Detention Center for Men and six died at the Puraquequara Prison Unit.

“The fact that the killings were coordinated across four separate prisons… suggests that this was a settling of scores,” Robert Muggah, research director at the Igarape Institute think tank in Rio de Janeiro, told AFP.

The latest violence in Amazonas, one of Brazil’s most violent states, was “almost guaranteed to inspire retribution inside and outside the prison walls.”

Outbreaks of deadly violence are a recurring problem in Brazil’s jails due to the lack of structural changes, experts said.

“Prisons continue to be places of serious violations of human rights,” said Juliana Melo, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.

“The conditions are appalling, with a majority of prisoners poor, black, badly schooled and marginalized.”

Brazil has the world’s third largest prison population after the United States and China, with 726,712 inmates as of June 2016, according to official statistics.

The population is double the capacity of the nation’s jails, which in the same year was estimated to be 368,049 inmates.

The federal government had been expected to add another 115,000 inmates by the end of 2018, Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.
Prisoners kill at least 56 people in a prison riot in Manaus, Brazil.