Thirty dead in Guatemala prison gang battles

By Eduardo Garcia

ESCUINTLA, Guatemala (Reuters) – Rival Guatemalan gang
members battled each other with grenades, guns and knives at
prisons throughout the country on Monday, leaving at least 30
people dead.

About 80 inmates were injured in the fighting between the
Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 street gangs, the government said.

Survivors said the breakdown of a peace pact between the
two gangs in the prisons may have caused the trouble.

Hundreds of police and soldiers armed with automatic
weapons and firing tear gas needed several hours to regain
control of the prisons.

Witnesses saw emergency services workers carry the bodies
of 18 prisoners out of one of the prisons, dubbed “The Hole” by
inmates, in the town of Escuintla in southern Guatemala.
Corpses were tattooed with gang symbols and some were
mutilated.

Hundreds of weeping relatives of the dead surrounded the
town morgue, trying to identify family members.

Many of the dead were killed by hand grenade blasts and
suffered knife and gunshot wounds, the government said.

Elsewhere, eight people were killed in the Pavon
correctional facility near Guatemala City and four more killed
in two other prisons, Francisco de la Pena, head of Guatemala’s
prison service, said at a news conference.

“We believe they were armed with grenades, pistols and
mini-Uzis,” Hugo Martinez of the government human rights
commission Copredeh said after entering the Escuintla jail.

Martinez said there had been no complaints of police
brutality during the Escuintla riot.

Guatemalan prisons are chronically underfunded and
corruption among prison staff means weapons and drugs are
widely circulated.

Street gangs known as “maras” are widespread in Central
America and are known for their use of extreme violence and a
deadly feud between the two principal gangs.

The groups are especially feared in Honduras, where 23
people were killed in a Christmas-time bus massacre blamed on
the gangs last year.

In April, former Honduran prison chief Oscar Sanchez was
jailed for 19 years for his role in the killing of 68 inmates,
mainly gang members, during a prison riot in 2003. Dozens more
gang members died in a Honduran prison fire in 2004.