Military police took control Saturday of a prison in northeastern Brazil after fighting between rival gangs left 26 inmates dead in recent days, the latest in a spate of violence in the country’s penitentiaries. A week after the violence first erupted at Alcacuz prison, military police, including riot police and others, moved into the complex outside the city of Natal.

Twenty-seven inmates have died in eruptions of violence in two northern Brazilian prisons, officials said Sunday as they quelled the latest in a string of prison disturbances across the country in which more than 100 people have died within two weeks. State security officials said fighting between rival gangs broke out Saturday at the adjacent Alcacuz and Rogerio Coutinho lockups near the city of Natal in the Rio Grande do Norte state.