At least 52 inmates were killed in a massive prison riot in northern Brazil on Monday – including 16 who were decapitated and others who were asphyxiated by smoke, according to reports.

The bloodbath broke out as rival gang factions fought each other at the Altamira Regional Recovery Center in the northern Brazilian state of Para, prison officials said.

Two guards were taken hostage by the marauding prisoners, but they were later released and no prison staff were injured in the melee.

State prisons chief Jarbas Vasconcelos told reporters that the fight erupted around 7 a.m., when breakfast was being served.

Images from the scene showed flames inside a building that almost reached the ceiling and people — apparently inmates — sitting on the ground outside.

“It is likely that many detainees died from asphyxiation (from smoke),” a government official told AFP, adding that the death toll could rise.

About 300 prisoners were being held at the prison, which reportedly has a capacity for 200, the official said.

An outbreak of violence in the same facility in September 2018 left at least seven prisoners dead, according to local media. Guards had apparently prevented an attempted escape.

The incident was the second major eruption of violence to rock Brazil’s severely overpopulated and deadly prison system in as many months.

In May this year, at least 55 inmates were killed in several jails in the neighboring state of Amazonas in violence also blamed on an apparent drug-trafficking gang dispute.

In January 2017, about 150 prisoners died during three weeks of violence in several Brazilian prisons as local gangs backed by Brazil’s two largest drug factions attacked one another.

Brazil has the world’s third-largest prison population after the US and China, with 726,712 prisoners as of June 2016, according to official statistics.

The population is about double the capacity of the nation’s jails, which in the same year was estimated to be 368,049 inmates.

The Brazilian government had been expected to add another 115,000 inmates by the end of 2018, Human Rights Watch said recently.

Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has said he wants to impose tighter controls in prisons, as well as building many more of them.

His ability to curtail violence, however, may be limited as most prisons are controlled at the state level.

With Post Wires