The still “preliminary” tally of collision victims between of gangs in a Honduran women’s prison which caused a fire arrived yesterday Tuesday 41 dead according to police, with the president of the Central American country saying she was “shocked” by the tragedy.

Others five female prisoners were injured and were taken to a hospital in explosion of violence in this prisonabout 25 kilometers north of the capital Tegucigalpa, police spokesman Edgardo Baraona said, without specifying whether all the victims were trapped.

President Xiomara Castro emphasized that the “monstrous” slaughter “designed by maras”the gangs terrorizing the country.

He demanded “accountability”especially from the interior ministry, promising “drastic measures” and removed the minister of public security overnight.

Mrs. Castro “decided to name General Gustavo Sanchez,” the former police chief, as Minister of Security, according to her statement. Mr. Sanchez replaces Ramon Savion.

Most victims were burned alive, while others succumbed to bullet woundsprosecutor’s representative Yuri Mora told AFP.

According to Mr. Mora, an investigation is underway to find out who was the gang that launched the attack.

According to Delma Ordonias, the victims were members of the Mara Salvatruzza gangwhich suggests, according to her, how the attack was carried out by female prisoners belonging to the rival Barrio 18.

Gang members broke into a cell where rival gang members were being held and set fire to it, Mrs. Ordonias told the press. The specific sector of the prison in Tamara, where about 900 women are incarceratedwas “completely destroyed” by the fire, according to her.

Hundreds of relatives gathered in the area where the prison is located trying to get news. “We don’t know who” the victims are, said a visibly desperate man.

The Deputy Minister of the Interior Yulisa Villanueva announced via Twitter that there was “immediate intervention of firefighters, police and military”.

Gangrene

In Honduras, the corruption and terror sown by the maras have turned into gangrene, which indulges, as in the neighboring countries, Guatemala and El Salvador, in drug trafficking, murder for hire, extortion…

Organized crime is blamed for the alarmingly high number of homicideswhich last year reached 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, a level four times the world average excluding only war zones.

According to authorities, despite measures taken to control Honduras’ 26 prisons, where about 20,000 people are held, incarcerated gang leaders continue to order crimes from their cells.

Violence and misery in Honduras are driving thousands of its citizens out try to immigrate to the US in search of a better life every year.

THE Honduras it is anyway major hub of cocaine trafficking routes from Colombia to the US market.

The former president of the Central American country, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was extradited in April 2022 to the American justice system to stand trial for drug trafficking. His brother “Tony,” a former congressman, was sentenced to life in prison a year earlier by a New York court.

According to US prosecutors, the former president turned Honduras into “narcotics”with accomplices at the highest levels of the police and military.

In May 2022, former police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla was also extradited to the US, accused of overseeing drug trafficking on behalf of former president Hernandez.

The new president Castro has pledged to fight the gangs and her government now allows, like the authorities in neighboring El Salvador, arrests without judicial warrants.