Gunfights between government troops and inmates erupted again on Monday inside one of Venezuela's most notorious prisons, a week after at least 22 people were killed during fierce rioting.
As members of Venezuela's national guard continued an all-out assault designed to quell the rebellion, hundreds of anxious relatives remained camped outside El Rodeo prison complex, desperately seeking information about their loved ones.
At around 10.40am local time the sound of gunfire could be heard coming from inside the besieged prison, around 30 miles east of the capital Caracas. A helicopter circled overhead. Friends and relatives of prisoners, who have been keeping a vigil outside El Rodeo since last Thursday, accused government forces of committing atrocities as they sought to regain control of the unit.
One relative, whose brother and husband are prisoners but who refused to be named, claimed: "I saw from the hilltop that inmates who walked into the [prison's] patio with their hands up were being shot by the guards as they left."
Marlon Garcia, 36, a former convict, was among those waiting for news of his brother, a prisoner inside the El Rodeo 2 unit.
"The last we heard from him was Saturday morning. He told my sister he was OK, but we've been hearing gunshots on and off until last night [Sunday]," he said.
Osmely Bracho, 37, who lives on a hilltop near El Rodeo, said bullets from clashes inside the prison had hit her home, which overlooks the complex. "I had to run to the furthest room because the bullets reached the bathroom," she said.
Sheltering from torrential rain under the zinc roof of a nearby shop, Carmen Grajineras, said she had been unable to contact her nephew and cousin, both prisoners, since last Thursday afternoon.
Relatives said terrified inmates had contacted them on mobile phones, pleading with them to call in local human rights organisations.
Thais Lopez, whose 25-year-old husband, Leonardo Pimentel, had been imprisoned in the El Rodeo 2 wing, said the shooting had started at midnight last Thursday and had continued ever since.
"It has been like this for several days. They've been asking us to help them. They have no food, and the smell is unbearable," said Lopez, 25, who last spoke to her husband on Saturday afternoon. Lopez claimed her husband had told her that dead bodies inside the prison had started to putrefy.
"They have had the power cut off and they are asphyxiating them with tear gas bombs", she said, as another volley of shots rang out and she dived for cover into a nearby ditch outside the prison perimeter.
The flareup at El Rodeo began on 12 June, when at least 22 people were killed during clashes between rival gangs.
A preacher who was inside the jail complex trying to negotiate a truce was said to be among the dead.
Violence erupted again last Friday as thousands of security forces stormed the prison. Gun battles broke out inside El Rodeo, which was built in the late 1970s for around 750 prisoners but had until last week been home to at least 3,600.
Official information about what was happening inside El Rodeo remained scarce, but at least three people were reported to have died during initial confrontations on Friday.
In an interview with Venezuelan state radio on Sunday night, Tareck El Aissami, the country's interior minister, said around 2,500 prisoners had been transferred out of the unit and were "safe and sound" and in "perfect" health.
El Aissami said government officials were now working with a commission of relatives, informing them of "the measures that we have taken to safeguard the lives and rights of the prisoners". Families had been the victims of "terrible media manipulation", he claimed.
But speaking to reporters on Sunday, the head of Venezuela's National Guard, general Luis Motta Domínguez, painted a bleak picture of operations inside El Rodeo. "It was like the Vietnam war, the second world war," he said of Friday's assault, according to the Caracas-based El Nacional.
Relatives claimed that a fire, which swept through one of the prison's wings on Sunday, had been deliberately started by troops. Authorities said the fire had been the result of a short-circuit but relatives rejected that claim, pointing out that the prison's electricity supply had already been cut off.
Venezuela is home to some of the region's most violent prisons; squalid, overcrowded jails where guns and drugs are readily available and gangs are often able to operate with relative impunity.
A 2011 Human Rights Watch report described conditions in Venezuelan prisons as "deplorable" and "among the most violent in Latin America."
Last September, 16 prisoners were killed and 35 wounded during clashes between rival gangs in the Aragua prison, the group said.
Last week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a statement urging the Venezuelan government to ensure its troops did "not directly commit attacks against the life or physical integrity of those in custody".
