RIO DE JANEIRO: At least 52 inmates were killed in a prison riot in northern Brazil on Monday as rival gang factions fought each other, an official said.
Sixteen of the dead were decapitated in the second major eruption of violence to rock the country’s severely overpopulated and deadly prison system in as many months.
Fighting broke out in the Altamira Regional Recovery Center at around 7:00 am (1000 GMT), an official from the Para state government’s penitentiary department told AFP.
Two guards were taken hostage during the clashes that ended at around midday. They were eventually freed.
Footage broadcast by SBT Altamira purportedly showed thick black smoke rising from the prison compound and people sitting on the roof of a building.
In May, at least 55 prisoners were killed in several jails in the neighboring state of Amazonas in violence also blamed on an apparent gang dispute.
Most of the victims were killed by asphyxiation, the state government said at the time.
The federal government dispatched reinforcements to boost security in the jails.
Brazil has the world’s third largest prison population after the United States and China, with 726,712 inmates as of June 2016, according to official statistics.
The population is double the capacity of the nation’s jails, which in the same year was estimated to be 368,049 inmates.
The federal government had been expected to add another 115,000 inmates by the end of 2018, Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.
Along with severe overcrowding and gang violence, riots and breakout attempts in Brazil’s prisons are not uncommon.
At least 52 dead in Brazil prison riot
At least 52 dead in Brazil prison riot
- Footage broadcast by a local station showed thick black smoke rising from the prison compound and people sitting on the roof of a building
- Along with severe overcrowding and gang violence, riots and breakout attempts in Brazil’s prisons are not uncommon
US Secret Service says shot and killed man trying to access Trump Florida estate
- Trump was in Washington at the time of the incident, which officials said happened around 1:30 am (0630 GMT)
MIAMI: The US Secret Service said Sunday its agents had shot and killed an armed man who illegally entered the premises of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump was in Washington at the time of the incident, which officials said happened around 1:30 am (0630 GMT).
“An armed man was shot & killed by US Secret Service agents & @PBCountySheriff after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago early this morning,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a post on X.
The suspect, a man in his early 20s, was observed by the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago property carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can,” the agency said in a statement.
Agents confronted the man and fired shots. No US officers were injured.
Trump has been the target of several assassination plots or attempts.
Earlier this month, Ryan Routh, 59, who plotted to assassinate the president at a Florida golf course in September 2024, two months before the US election, was sentenced to life in prison.
Routh’s planned attack on Trump came two months after an assassination attempt on the Republican leader in Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Matthew Crooks fired several shots during a rally, one of them grazing Trump’s right ear.
That attack, in which a rallygoer was killed, proved to be a turning point in Trump’s return to power. Crooks was immediately shot and killed by security forces and his motive remains unknown.
