South Carolina prison riot video shows bodies on the blood-spattered floor after seven killed in brawl

GRUESOME footage has emerged of the blood-soaked aftermath of the gang-related violence which erupted in a South Carolina jail and left seven lags dead.

Prisoners at one of America's most notorious jails ran riot for eight hours in the worst prison disturbance the United States has seen since 1993.

Along with those brutally slaughtered, another 17 inmates were wounded in the violence that was eventually brought under control at around 3am on Monday morning at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville.

Shocking footage of the slaughter has now emerged which shows bodies littering the floor with blood covering the floor and walls.

Forty-four guards were on duty when a fight broke out in a dorm at the 1,583-inmate prison on Sunday evening.

Chaos soon escalated as the brawl spread across two other dorms in the high-security prison.

Inmates armed with homemade knives fought each other in a bloody fight over gang territory, money and contraband.

Bryan Stirling, director of the state Department of Corrections, told a news conference: "This was all about territory. This was about contraband, this was about cellphones.

"These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they are incarcerated."

A prisoner who witnessed the violence said bodies "were literally stacked on top of each other".

The anonymous inmate also claimed correctional officers and medical personnel failed to attend to the dead of dying scattered across the bloody prison floor.

Banned mobile phones were said to have been used to help stir up trouble.

All seven deaths were the result of stabbing injuries and no prison guards were hurt.

Prison staff delayed sending in reinforcements for four hours as a means of ensuring no guards were killed.

South Carolina prisons chief Bryan Stirling said: "This was all about territory. This was about contraband, this was about cellphones.

"These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they're incarcerated.

"We gathered as many people as we could, as quickly as we could and went in as soon as we thought it was safe for our staff."

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster expressed his fury at being unable to clamp down on mobile phone signals in prisons.

He said: "There are prisons around the country -- state prisons, federal prisons all - that would be safer with this jamming."

It was the most inmates slain in a single riot in the US since nine prisoners and a guard died in 1993 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facilty.

The 11-day riot - which features in Netflix documentary Captive - saw an unlikely alliance between prison gangs Gangster Disciples, Muslims and Ayran Brotherhood in an attempt to murder 'snitch' inmates.

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