Sixty-six people have died in a jail riot in northern Honduras after an armed youth gang went on a rampage and set fire to the prison, police say.
Members of the "Mara 18" gang wielding machetes, knives and guns, attacked other prisoners at the jail located in the Caribbean port city of La Ceiba, police spokesman Marcelino Garcia told journalists.
The youths then lit several fires, he said. The prison housed 550 prisoners about 115 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa.
Police said many of the 66 killed and 23 injured in the violence were members of the gang. They also said four people had been beheaded, while three women visiting the prison were among the dead.
"Many of the victims died from the fire or smoke because they were trapped in an area that was ablaze," police commissioner Leonel Sauceda said.
President Ricardo Maduro visited the riot scene and said he had ordered tighter security at other prisons.
"I have ordered a doubling of security at the rest of the penitentiary centres in the country. We have to prevent this kind of incident in the penal system," Maduro told a news conference.
The 25 jails in Honduras hold 12,000 prisoners, double their capacity. "What happened was partly due to this overcrowding," Maduro said.
Experts estimate some 32,000 youths belong to gangs dedicated to robbery, drug dealing, violent attacks and other crimes in this poor Central American nation of six million people.
Coffee-exporting Honduras has some of the worst crime rates in the region. The government sent thousands of troops onto the streets of its main cities in 2002 to fight crime, particularly murder and kidnappings.