Healthcare workers and members of the Bolivarian national police watch as an ambulance arrives with prisoners outside a hospital after a riot erupted inside a prison in Guanare, Venezuela on May 1, 2020
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 Saturday.
"At the moment we have been able to confirm 47 dead and 75 wounded," deputy Maria Beatriz Martinez, elected from Portuguesa state where the Los Llanos prison is located, told AFP.
The Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP) rights group also gave the same tally.
The initial toll Friday from the riot at the prison in the city of Guanare was 17 dead and nine wounded.
The country's prisons minister, Iris Varela, told local newspaper Ultimas Noticias on Friday that the incident resulted from an escape attempt and that the prison director had been shot and wounded.
She did not give a death toll, and Venezuela's information ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A prisoners rights group said the Los Llanos Penitentiary was massively overcrowded.
It was built to house 750 inmates but currently holds 2,500, said Carolina Giron of the Venezuelan Prison Observatory (OVP).
"The prisoners are upset that they are not allowed visits and they do not have water or food," because of coronavirus quarantine measures in force since March 16, Giron told AFP.
"The vast majority of the prisoners are malnourished and have tuberculosis," she said.
OVP documented 97 deaths in Venezuelan prisons in 2019, 70 percent of which were due to health reasons.
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