RIO DE JANEIRO — The death toll of a riot in a penitentiary in northeastern Brazil rose on Sunday to at least 27 prisoners, increasing the number of prison killings this year in the country to more than 120.

Decapitations and mutilations are common in Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons, in which 40 percent of inmates have yet to be sentenced, but the latest wave of brutality has appalled many here.

The riot began about 5 p.m. Saturday at the State Penitentiary of Alcaçuz, 13 miles from Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, and continued until about 7 a.m. Sunday, when riot police officers took control of the prison.

The prison has a capacity of 620 but was holding around 1,100 prisoners when the riot began, authorities said. All the inmates had been sentenced, Franco said.

Speaking from inside the prison Sunday, Wilma Batista, director of the prison agents’ union in Rio Grande do Norte, said she had seen 27 bodies, 25 of which were mutilated.

With Brazil swamped in recession, President Michel Temer’s government reeling from one graft scandal after another, and a wave of prison violence, many Brazilians feel they are going back to a darker recent past when crime, corruption, and the economy were out of control.

The killings marked the escalation of a deadly gang war that exploded when 56 prisoners were massacred in a prison in Manaus in Amazonas state on Jan. 1.

New York Times