MANAUS: Rioting inmates decapitated their rivals in brutal fighting between two gangs in a Brazilian jail that left 56 dead, while 144 prisoners escaped, officials said Monday.
The riot broke out Sunday afternoon and lasted through the night at a prison on the outskirts of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, state public security secretary Sergio Fontes said.
Bloodied and burned bodies were stacked in a concrete prison yard and piled in carts, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Fontes's department later lowered the death toll to 56 from an earlier count of 60.
The fighting ranks among the most deadly of numerous prison riots across Latin America in the past decade.
Fontes called it "the biggest massacre" ever committed at a prison in the state.
Outside, heavily armed police hunted for dozens of inmates who escaped through a series of tunnels discovered at the Anisio Jobim penitentiary complex.
Fontes's department later said that 112 prisoners escaped from that prison and another 72 from the nearby Antonio Trindade Penal Institute. Just 40 of the escapees were captured, it added.
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