One dead and seven injured in clashes between gangs in four prisons in Honduras

One inmate died and seven others were injured. this Saturday in simultaneous confrontations between inmates of two rival gangs that occurred in four prisons in Honduras, the authorities reported.

The clashes occurred in the prisons of the cities of Támara (east), El Porvenir (north), Santa Bárbara and Morocelí (both in the northwest), but authorities said by evening that they had retaken control of all four prisons.

Prison guards, “in conjunction with various police units, lmanaged to restore order in four prisons where there had been riots,” the spokeswoman for the National Penitentiary Institute, Digna Aguilar, told the press.

“Product of the riot among the members of two criminal structures” (gangs) there was one dead and two injured in the Santa Bárbara prison, three injured in the Morocelí prison and two in the Támara prison, he added, specifying that El Porvenir had not yet received a report on potential victims.

The injured inmates were taken to various hospitals, Aguilar added.

Previously, a prison source told the press that “one of the criminal organizations would have received instructions from a group of people from outside the prisons to try to destabilize security National” during Holy Week.

Local media said that many shots were heard inside the prisons, but the authorities did not confirm if the inmates had firearms.

On July 4, 2022, a confrontation between imprisoned gang members culminated in six inmates being killed in the Santa Barbara prison.

And on January 27, 2022, four inmates died and another 11 were injured in a confrontation between inmates in the El Porvenir prison, on the Honduran Caribbean coast.

There are some 22,000 prisoners in the thirty prisons of Hondurasyessome classified as true crime academies by the authorities themselves.