Honduras police find human remains in youth jail

14 January 2015 Last updated at 06:47 ET
Honduras police find human remains in youth jail

Police in Honduras have uncovered a makeshift grave containing human remains at a jail for young offenders.

They said it contained the remains of at least two inmates.

Officials said they had assumed the two had escaped six months earlier but now thought they had been killed by rival gang members.

Honduras has the highest peacetime murder rate in the world and its prisons are notoriously overcrowded and violent.

Renacimiento prison, about 20km (12 miles) north of Tegucigalpa, holds 120 inmates between 12 and 18 years of age, the majority of them gang members.

Other remains

The bodies were found after a tip-off about a grave triggered a two-day search by security officials.
Police said they thought the grave might hold six more bodies of people reported missing last year.

"We thought these youths had escaped six months ago but they could have been killed, dismembered, burned and buried over a personal dispute," police chief Gustavo Paz said

More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-30813992