In a women's prison in Honduras, a gang killed 46 women, according to The Guardian. According to the President of the country, Siomara Castro, this was done by prisoners, members of the Barrio 18 gang, who were kept in a neighboring block. The prison is located in the city of Tamara.
As Castro said, "the crime was planned with the knowledge and tacit consent of the security forces." She did not specify how the members of Barrio 18 were able to take possession of small arms and cold weapons, and then get into another block of the prison.
Sandra Rodriguez Vargas, assistant commissioner of the prison system of Honduras, said that the bandits "removed" the guards of the institution, after which they opened the gate to another section and began to kill the women who were there.
They also set fire to the building, in which 26 prisoners were burned alive. The rest of the women were either shot dead or stabbed to death with machetes. The authorities recognized the incident as a "terrorist attack", but also recognized that the gang had influence on the prison administration.
It is reported that in the prisons of the countries of Central America, a situation often arises when representatives of criminal groups practically control the penitentiary institutions and establish their own rules in them. In 2012, 361 inmates died in a fire in Comayagua Prison in Honduras, for which no specific cause was reported. In 2017, girls held in a Guatemalan teen shelter set fire to mattresses to protest rape and abuse. A fire broke out in which 41 of them died.