Troops closing in on hundreds of armed inmates in an Istanbul prison were hampered by a snowstorm recently as authorities increased the death toll from four days of prison riots to 22.
The fight for control of Turkey's prisons began December 19, when troops stormed 20 penitentiaries. By that Friday, only inmates at the Umraniye prison were still holding out.  During the night, smoke billowed from Umraniye as left-wing inmates inside set fire to mattresses and blankets, resisting calls to surrender.
As daylight came, soldiers in riot gear advanced further into the prison, where 423 inmates had barricaded themselves inside a conference hall, footage on private NTV television showed. The station said a snowstorm was slowing down the soldiers, and authorities said they were moving cautiously to avoid further casualties.
On December 21, troops tossed tear gas grenades through holes drilled in the roof in a move to end the siege. The inmates still refused to come out, vowing to fight until  'death or victory.'
At least 22 people - 20 prisoners and two soldiers - have died since soldiers stormed the 20 penitentiaries to end a two-month hunger strike by prisoners protesting moves from Turkey's huge, packed prison wards to small cells.
The inmates claim they would be vulnerable to abuse from authorities in the small cells, and most of those who died set themselves ablaze rather than surrender alive.
At least five of the bodies bore gunshot wounds, an autopsy report revealed.
After the raids, more than 600 inmates were immediately incarcerated in new prisons with small cells.
The government has been insisting on ending the ward system, which lets up to 100 prisoners live together with little or no oversight. Prisoners from political groups often run the wards like indoctrination centers and decorate them with rebel flags.
Soldiers found guns, computers and mobile phones in some recently captured prison wards. In one instance, rebels had torn down the walls of a ward so that male and female prisoners could live together.