COLOMBIA: At least 52 inmates were killed and 26 more injured early Tuesday after a fire broke out during a prison riot in southwestern Colombia, the national prisons agency said.
The tragedy occurred when rioting inmates set a fire at around 2:00 am, attempting to prevent police from entering their enclosure at the prison in the city of Tulua, said Tito Castellanos, director of the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC).
“We have treated a total of 26 injured and the number of deaths is 52,” Cristina Lesmes, head of the health department in Valle del Cauca, said on Twitter.
“We have people in very serious condition with extremely extensive burns,” she said.
Castellanos had earlier given the “riot” death toll as 49 with another 30, including six prison guards, “injured and affected by the blaze and the smoke.”
The prison, which holds more than 1,200 inmates, was surrounded by police and soldiers.
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“By setting mattresses alight, they had not gauged what the consequences could be and unfortunately this happened,” Castellanos told Radio RCN.
He said the blaze had been brought under control by fire fighters.
By evening, forensic teams had entered the prison to try to identify the bodies.
Outside the prison, dozens of family members gathered hoping for information on their loved ones.
A prison official gave an initial list of survivors to those waiting.
“I don’t know anything, INPEC won’t let us in,” a tearful Maria Eugenia Rojas, whose son Luis Miguel Rojas is an inmate in the pavilion where the riot happened, told Caracol television.
