MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Prison massacres (and beheading) continues in Brazil, this time 30 inmates in Natal

The Alcacuz prison, just outside the state capital Natal, was built for a maximum of 620 inmates but currently houses 1,083, the state justice department said.

The latest in a string of brutal prison massacres involving suspected gang members in Brazil has killed at least 30 inmates, most of whom were beheaded, officials said on Sunday. The bloodbath erupted Saturday night in the overcrowded Alcacuz prison in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. Similar violence at other jails in Brazil left around 100 inmates dead in early January.

 “Twenty-six deaths have been verified,” the state's public safety manager, Caio Bezerra, told a news conference. The authorities’ estimates around 30 were killed as they gathered bodies and body parts, he said.

Security forces stormed the prison at dawn and restored order after 14 hours of violence, the local authorities said. Officials said members of two drug gangs clashed violently after coming out of different parts of the prison.

President Michel Temer said on Twitter that the federal government stood ready to provide “all assistance necessary.”

Separately, officials in the southern state of Parana said 28 prisoners escaped from a jail in the city of Curitiba after inmates blew up a wall and fired on police.

At Alcacuz, security forces surrounded the prison but had to wait until first light Sunday to storm the site with armored vehicles, officials said. Prisoners had cut off the electricity and were said to have firearms.

The prison, just outside the state capital Natal, was built for a maximum of 620 inmates but currently houses 1,083, the state justice department said.

The riot was thought to have been a clash between Brazil's biggest drug gang, the First Capital Command (PCC), and a group allied to its main rival Red Command, Brazilian media said. Experts say the violence is part of a war between drug gangs battling for control of one of the world's most important cocaine markets and trafficking routes.

Violence in the first week of January left around 100 prisoners dead -- many of them active gang members, the authorities said. Many of the victims were beheaded, disemboweled or dismembered, officials said.

Brazil's inmate population has been swollen by efforts to crack down on the drug trade. The country's jails hold 622,000 inmates, mostly young black men, according to a 2014 justice ministry report. It found that 50% more capacity was needed. Brazil has the world's fourth-largest prison population after the United States, China and Russia, according to the report.