[bloodrayne]

Prisoners suspected of cannibalism
From correspondents in Guatemala City

A GUATEMALAN prison gang may have cooked and eaten as many as four inmates over the Christmas holidays, investigators said today.

The report describes human bone fragments found at the Pavoncito Correction Facility, 25km east of the capital, where four prisoners went missing after a December 23 riot.

"They appear to be the fragments of two individuals, though the pieces are small, they are definitely human," Samuel Suasanavar, technical director of the Foundation of Forensic Anthropology of Guatemala, said.

Seven inmates were killed during the riot, but four others simply vanished.

Stories circulated that the gang quartered the remains, cooked the flesh and served it to their cellmates.

Suasanavar said 60 bone fragments had been recovered, among them pieces of skull, vertebrae and femur.

"The remains reveal that they wanted to erase the evidence ... given the small size of the fragments and the fact that they were found in a drainage ditch," the investigators said in a report.

Security forces resumed control of the facility only in April.

They relocated some 800 prisoners, clearing the area for the investigation.