At least 41 inmates were killed Tuesday in a showdown between rival gangs at a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, according to the latest toll released by Honduran authorities.

About 900 women are held at CEFAS prisons, located 25 kilometers north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

Police spokesman Edgardo Baraona confirmed the death toll to AFP, expressing fears that the final toll could be higher.

Relatives of the prisoners said it all started when a group of prisoners set fire to a cell where members of a rival gang were being held. The prison wing where the fire broke out “has been completely destroyed, it has been reduced to ashes,” they said.

Most of the bodies were found charred and it is difficult to identify the victims, police sources said earlier.

A total of about 22,000 people are held in the overcrowded Honduran prisons and from time to time there have been many fatal tragedies. Eighteen people were killed in 2019 in a settlement of scores between inmates in a penitentiary. More than 350 inmates died in the large fire that broke out in 2012 in Comayagua prisons.