Sawt Falasteen - Honduras reels after 'monstrous' gang battle kills 46 in women's prison

As the first bodies were handed over to mourning families for burial, the prosecutor's office on Wednesday updated the confirmed toll from 41.

It could not say whether all the victims of Tuesday's deadly battle at a prison about 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa, had been inmates.

The violence erupted when members of the Barrio 18 gang burst into an area housing the rival Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) group, shot at them, and set the place on fire, according to authorities and witnesses.

That part of the prison was "completely destroyed" in the blaze, Delma Ordonez, who represents inmates' relatives, told journalists.

According to police operations director Juan Rochez, the attackers came armed with "more than 21 firearms" and grenades. Eleven suspects have been identified.

A spokeswoman for the Forensic Medicine Directorate, Issa Alvarado, said 23 of the bodies had been identified by Wednesday and released to next-of-kin.

Hundreds of relatives remained gathered at the directorate's offices in Tegucigalpa, desperate for news on the fate of their loved ones.

Identification was continuing "in complex cases" of badly mutilated bodies, the prosecutor's office said on its Twitter account.

"I don't know if my daughter was shot or stabbed," local media quoted Olga Castro, mother of 44-year-old Jenny Patricia Castro, as saying.

"People say they heard them (the women) screaming for the gates to be unlocked because... where she was, they locked from the outside while they were burning.

Most of the victims died in the fire, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office, Yuri Mora, told AFP. Some of the bodies were riddled with bullets.

- 'Monstrous murder' -

Honduran President Xiomara Castro said Tuesday she was "shocked" by the "monstrous murder of women in CEFAS by gangs in full view and tolerance of security authorities."

A state of emergency was announced, and Castro dismissed security minister Ramon Sabillon.

The president in April placed deputy security minister Julissa Villanueva in charge of prisons security after clashes in four penitentiaries left one dead and seven injured.

Villanueva then announced plans to bring order to the country's 26 prisons, with some 20,000 inmates, including "real disarmament" and "total blocking of the telephone signal" to stop inmates running their criminal business from the inside.

She subsequently claimed Tuesday's violence was "an attack on the government" for the actions it has taken.

Honduras is a country wracked by corruption and gangs that have infiltrated even the top levels of government.

Along with neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala, Honduras forms Central America's so-called "triangle of death" plagued by the murderous gangs called "maras" that control drug trafficking and organized crime.

Drug trafficking groups and gang members are largely responsible for the soaring rate of homicides in Honduras, which at 40 murders per 100,000 inhabitants last year was four times higher than the world average.

"For 30 years, organized crime, drug trafficking, the gangs MS and (Barrio) 18 have sown terror" in Honduras, criminologist Gonzalo Sanchez told AFP.

"This has become a monster with a thousand heads which is hard to combat," he said, with the country's prisons transformed into "universities of crime."

- 'Narco-state' -

Honduras is also a major transit country for Colombian cocaine and other narcotics headed mainly to the United States.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez was extradited to the United States on drug charges in April 2022, accused by prosecutors of turning his country into a "narco-state" involving the military, police and civilians in drug trafficking.

Castro, the country's new leftist president, has vowed to tackle criminal gangs, last year temporarily lifting constitutional guarantees to allow police to make arrests without warrants.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras has urged the authorities after Tuesday's clashes to "investigate the facts, prevent their repetition, and protect the lives of prisoners."

For its part, Honduras' human rights ombudsman said prisoners' rights were not adequately guaranteed.

"It is estimated that at least 1,050 inmates have lost their lives violently in prisons in Honduras since 2003," it said on its Twitter page.

P.Tamimi--SF-PST