TEGUCIGALPA – At least five people died and another 39 were injured in a brawl that took place this Thursday in a “maximum security” prison in eastern Honduras, reported the president of the Association of Relatives of the Deprived of Liberty, Delma Ordóñez.

“There are 39 people injured, 15 of them were transferred to the Tegucigalpa Hospital Escuela, and there are five confirmed deaths in the penal center,” Ordóñez told reporters.

He pointed out that the fight took place between inmates of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs in the prison known as La Tolva, in the municipality of Morocelí, department of El Paraíso, in the eastern Central American country.

Until now, no authority from the National Penitentiary Institute (INP) of Honduras has reported anything about what happened in the prison.

Local media began to report the brawl around 8:00 am, local time, but initially it only emerged that a police officer from the prison arrived injured in an ambulance at the Hospital Escuela, in Tegucigalpa, the capital.

Unofficially, it has emerged that the five inmates died inside the prison, apparently due to the explosion of a fragmentation grenade, and that 39 others were injured.

Television news programs have broadcast external images in which members of the security forces, armed with firearms, have been seen mobilizing inside the jail, in which dozens of shots have also been heard.

The state National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras (Conadeh) said that the deaths and attacks reported Thursday in La Tolva “evidence the lack of implementation of a proper prison administration.”

In addition, he urged the Honduran authorities to “guarantee the right to personal, mental and moral integrity and the human right to life of persons deprived of liberty.”

La Tolva is one of the two “maximum security” prisons that Honduras has, in which violent acts are recorded with some frequency, with tragic results.

In October 2019, two inmates were assassinated and, as if it were a message with a dedication for someone, the videos of both cases soon transpired.

With the inmates murdered at the time, the first in La Tolva prison, and the second in El Pozo I, in Ilama, Santa Bárbara (west), there were five who had lost their lives violently in 2019, in both prisons, which they have cost Hondurans millions.

Six other inmates were killed, two in June 2017 and two in September 2018 in La Tolva, plus another two in El Pozo in October 2018.

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