The prisoners staged a riot in the Guatemalan prison of Quetzaltenango, according to preliminary information, from six to ten people were killed during the riots, local media, citing the national police, reported that some of them were beheaded.
“The National Civil Police confirmed that at 4:00 pm, riots occurred in the colony of the municipality of Cantel, Quetzaltenango, … during which six inmates were beheaded, the identity of each of them and the cause of the incident are still unknown,” the website said.
According to unconfirmed information from various media, the number of victims is up to 10 people, including a female visitor to this colony. It is specified that members of the Mara 18 and Salvatrucha criminal gangs were kept in this sector of the correctional center.
The Kantel correctional colony holds about 900 prisoners, but the media say that it now contains more than 2,200 people – members of criminal gangs, drug dealers and suspects.
To help restore order in the colony, reinforcements and rescuers were sent to the scene. Human rights defenders appealed to the authorities with a request to urgently return control over the institution in order to avoid new incidents.
