This archive report was first published on 23 December 2019.
At least 18 people have lost their lives in a violent clash between prisoners at a jail in central Honduras, just two days after another 18 died in a separate facility.
The violence occurred on Sunday afternoon at El Porvenir prison, located north of the capital Tegucigalpa, according to a military spokesman.
Firearms, knives, and machetes were used in the clash, leaving two people injured, the spokesman for the combined national security force, Fusina, revealed.
The latest violence comes as Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez grapples with a recent wave of prison killings, which has prompted him to order the army and police to take full control of the country's 27 prisons.
With some 21,000 inmates, the prisons are severely overcrowded, and Hernandez has identified 18 penal centers as 'high risk' and deployed the military to take control.
The crackdown follows the killings of five members of the feared Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang on December 14, and the murder of the warden of El Pozo prison, Pedro Idelfonso Armas, just a day earlier.
Honduras has been plagued by drug trafficking, gangs, poverty, and corruption, with a homicide rate of 41.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, one of the highest in the world outside areas of armed conflict.
