AUTHORITIES in Honduras today began to hand over to relatives the hacked, burned corpses of 46 women killed in the worst riot at a women’s prison in recent memory.

Some of the bodies were so badly burned that they will need genetic testing or dental studies to enable an identification to be made, said Honduras’s national police investigation agency spokesman Yuri Mora.

The picture that began to emerge of Tuesday’s violence at the women’s prison in Tamara, Honduras was one of a carefully planned massacre of 46 rival gang members by inmates belonging to the notorious Barrio 18 street gang.

Rivals were sprayed with gunfire, hacked to pieces with machetes and then survivors locked in their cells and before being doused with flammable liquid.

The carnage has led to calls for change to the country’s prison system and speculation over whether Honduras should emulate the drastic no-privileges prisons set up in neighbouring El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele.

But Honduran human rights expert Joaquin Mejia said: “One of the grave dangers is the Bukele-ization of the security problem in this country, with everything that would imply.”

Jessica Sanchez, an activist with the Civil Society Group, a human rights organisation, said: “We believe that this massacre was carried out on orders from a criminal network, and I am sure it was known beforehand, and nothing was done.”

President Xiomara Castro said that the riot at the prison was “planned by maras (street gangs) with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities.”

President Castro fired former security minister Ramon Sabillon and replaced him with Gustavo Sanchez, who had been serving as head of the National Police.

She ordered that all of the country’s 21 prisons be placed for one year under the control of the military police, who will be asked to train 2,000 new guards.