At least 16 prisoners were decapitated and dozens more were killed during a prison riot in Brazil.
At least 57 inmates died in the riots that involved criminal gangs in Para, located in the northern part of the country.
The fight began at the Altamira Regional Recovery Center at around 7 a.m. local time, according to a Para state official in the AFP report.
Brazil has a prison population of 704,000, although there is only cell space for about 416,000 around the country, the report noted.
In May, some 55 inmates died at prisons in Amazonas state.
At one prison, 15 prisoners were found dead, with many being stabbed by makeshift knives and strangled, according to the report. Forty prisoners were found dead at another facility, and their reported causes of death were asphyxiation.
Two years before that, about 150 prisoners died during a several-week-long span of violence across several prisons. The violence was blamed by rival gangs.
According to Sky, the riots lasted weeks and were linked to the control of drug-trafficking networks in the area.
In May, 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 Gov. 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. The 2017 slayings were largely gang-related, prompting authorities to increase efforts to separate factions and frequently transfer prisoners.
Authorities haven’t yet said whether gang wars were behind the latest blood-letting.
Moro had to send a federal task force to help tame violence in Ceara state in January that local officials said was ordered by crime gang leaders angered by plans to impose tighter controls in the state’s prisons.
