At least 37 people dead after clashes in Venezuelan prison

At least 37 people have been killed during clashes between armed inmates and security forces at a small prison in southern Venezuela.

State governor Liborio Guarulla said the bloodshed came after fighting erupted on Tuesday night in the prison in Puerto Ayacucho, capital of sparsely populated Amazonas state.

He said security forces raided the facility seeking to restore order in the prison, where the inmates had seized control several weeks ago.

“At midnight special forces showed up and through the night we heard gunfire and explosions,” Mr Guarulla told The Associated Press.

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The office of Venezuela’s chief prosecutor said it was investigating the incident. It said 14 prison guards were also injured.

Overwhelmed

Mr Guarulla said the city’s morgue had been overwhelmed trying to handle so many bodies.

Venezuela has around 30 jails, many of which suffer from overcrowding and are dominated by criminal gangs that traffic in weapons and narcotics as well as plot crimes that take place beyond the prison walls.

The prison system, built to hold about 16,000 inmates, is currently estimated to house some 50,000, according to the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, which monitors conditions in jails.

But Mr Guarulla said the facility in Puerto Ayacucho housed only about 110 inmates, all of them awaiting trial, and it was unlikely that it suffered from the same volatile conditions seen elsewhere in the country’s prisons.

A prison riot in Venezuela in 2013 left 61 people dead.

AP