47 dead in  Venezuela  prison riot A screenshot shows members of the National Guard deployed outside Los Llanos prison, in Guanare on May 2 after a riot

The death toll from a prison riot in western Venezuela has risen to at least 47, with 75 wounded, an opposition politician and prisoners’ rights group said on Saturday.

“At the moment we have been able to confirm 47 dead and 75 wounded,” said deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez, elected from Portuguesa state where the Los Llanos prison is located.

The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) rights group also gave the same tally, calling the violence a “massacre”, and both confirmed that all of the dead were detainees.

The disruption began on Friday when inmates at the prison, located in the city of Guanare, began destroying “the security fences around the perimeter” in a “massive escape attempt”, according to an army report on Friday seen by AFP. It also said the prison’s director was wounded.

Martinez, however, refuted the account, stating the uprising was staged by a group of prisoners “because they did not have access to food”.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging, visits from family and friends – who often bring food and medicine to inmates – have been greatly reduced.

The identities of the dead were verified “through the morgue, thanks to relatives who recognized the dead in photos that were shown to them on a computer”, said Carolina Giron of OVP.

According to the organisation, 97 deaths occurred in Venezuelan prisons in 2019, 70% of which were due to diseases such as tuberculosis and a lack of medicine.

More than 330 cases of coronavirus, including 10 deaths, have been recorded in Venezuela, but authorities say there have been no cases in the country’s prisons.

The initial toll Friday from the riot was 17 dead and nine wounded.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has breached the walls of DR Congo prisons with potentially catastrophic consequences for the overcrowded facilities, charity groups say.

On Thursday and Friday, 43 prisoners tested positive for Covid-19 at the Ndolo military prison in central Kinshasa, Africa’s third largest city with at least 10 million inhabitants.

“Tests of all detainees are in progress,” according to the latest bulletin by health authorities.

The prison holds 1 900-2 000 prisoners, according to different sources.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has registered 10-20 new cases of the virus per day since it was first detected there on 10 March.

The nation has reported 604 cases in all, mostly in Kinshasa, and 32 deaths.

Health Minister Eteni Longondo wants to isolate those infected in the prison and sanitise the cells.

He said that “a woman who brought food” had introduced the virus into the prison.

In mid-April, the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that “the Democratic Republic of Congo’s overcrowded and unsanitary prisons are at grave risk of Covid-19 outbreaks.”

HRW, citing figures by the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, said: “Congo’s main prisons are at 432 percent of capacity.”

The prison in Goma had an even higher rate of 600 percent, it added.

The group published photos said to show prisoners sleeping on the floor in a cell at the Makala prison in Kinshasa, at 461 percent of capacity.

It quoted a recently released prisoner as saying that “there were at least 850 of us in a space with a capacity for 100 people.”

He added that “the situation is worse in some of the other wings. If the coronavirus reaches Makala, there will be no one left.”

According to the health ministry no Covid-19 cases have been detected at the prison to date. In early January at least 11 prisoners died there from a lack of food and medication, a penitentiary source told AFP.

Other sources say up to 25 people had died.

Each year, hundreds of detainees die in Congolese prisons from starvation and lack of care.-AFP.

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