272 inmates die in Honduras’ prison fire

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Headlines Thursday, February 16th, 2012

IN what is termed the deadliest fire in years in the country’s overcrowded prison system, about 272 inmates were killed and dozens injured when a fire tore through a prison in Honduras, officials in the Central American country said yesterday.

“We are pulling out bodies… The situation is serious. Most (inmates) have suffocated,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted prisons director, Danilo Orellan, as saying.

Orellan added that the fire did not appear to have been caused by a riot.

Also, Honduran Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla confirmed the death toll at 272 inmates, adding that there were “around 50 with burns and other injuries.”

“That is what our medical and legal services tell us,” Bonilla told AFP at the scene of the blaze. “Unfortunately, the final toll could be much higher.”

Dozens of burned inmates were being taken to hospitals in the central city of Comayagua.

The fire was believed to have broken out around 10:50 pm Tuesday (0450 GMT Wednesday), Orellan said, adding that investigators were looking into whether it was caused by an inmate or by a short circuit.

“We’re bringing in all of our forensic equipment,” he said.

Witnesses said some of the inmates escaped the blaze by jumping from the prison rooftop, and there were reports that some of them had fled the facility and were on the loose.

The prison, located some 90 kilometres north of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, held around 850 prisoners.

It is located some 500 metres from a highway that links San Pedro Sula, the economic centre of Honduras, with Tegucigalpa, the seat of the federal government.

Meanwhile, before the names of the dead were announced, desperate relatives waited for word about the fate of their loved ones. At the break of dawn, there were already hundreds lined up at the prison gates.

“My brother Roberto Mejia was in unit six,” said an emotional Glenda Mejia.

“They’ve told me that the inmates from that unit are all dead,” she told AFP.

Next to her, Carlos Ramirez was waiting outside the facility for word about his brother, Elwin, imprisoned on a murder conviction, who also was housed in unit six.

“I haven’t been told anything,” Carlos Ramirez said, his voice breaking.

It was the worst disaster to strike a penal facility in Honduras in years.

Latin American prisons are notoriously overcrowded, particularly in impoverished Central American states like Honduras, which are gripped by gang violence and drug trafficking.

The most recent similar disaster in Honduras, in May 2004, killed around 100 inmates during a fire at a prison in San Pedro Sula, which was blamed on structural problems at the facility.wp_posts