Armed people went into rival gang’s cell block, opened fire and doused survivors in flammable liquid, officer says after 46 killed

Gang members at a women’s prison in Honduras slaughtered 46 other female inmates by spraying them with gunfire, hacking them with machetes and then locking survivors in their cells before dousing them with flammable liquid, a senior police officer has said.

The carnage in Tuesday’s riot was the worst atrocity at a women’s prison in recent memory; the intensity of the fire left the walls of the cells blackened and beds reduced to twisted heaps of metal.

Some women were burned to death in uprising blamed on crackdown on illicit activities inside of the country’s prisons

At least 41 women have been killed – some of them burned to death – after an outbreak of violence between gangs at a prison in Honduras.

Authorities found dozens of bodies after the violence on Tuesday at the prison in Tamara, about 30 miles (50km) north-west of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, said Yuri Mora, spokesperson for the national police investigation agency.