A fire raged through a Honduran prison killing 103 inmates and injuring 25 others, amid allegations jail guards had refused to let young gang members out of their cells, authorities said.
Fifty-three of the victims belonged to the Mara Salvatrucha street gang. Under a law banning gang membership, some were jailed for wearing gang tattoos, a group that helps gang members said.
The blaze early Monday in the Central Prison of San Pedro Sula, some 240km north of Tegucigalpa was the second major fire tragedy to hit a Honduran prison in little more than a year.
Honduran President Ricardo Maduro broke off a European tour to return and handle the crisis.
First Vice President Vicente William convened an emergency Cabinet meeting to start up an investigation.
Deputy Security Minister Armando Calidonio said 102 inmates perished in the Central Prison fire and another died in hospital, where 25 people were being treated for burns.
Firefighters said a short circuit caused bedding to catch fire. Victims died from thick smoke and inadequate ventilation which hindered firefighters, fire commissioner Carlos Cordero said.
Honduran TV broadcast images of charred bodies strewn near the prison, which was destroyed.
One inmate claimed prisoners shouted in vain for help but that jailers refused to open the cells so they could flee the blaze.
"The police were saying, `leave them in there, leave them in there,' as we were yelling `let us out,'" inmate Pablo Cardona said.
"They wanted us to die," said Cardona, who identified himself as a member of one of Honduras' notorious drug gangs.
Coroners who had examined 30 bodies said there was not yet any evidence to support early reports that guards had shot the inmates.
Human-rights groups here have alleged that the government has quietly pursued a policy of executing gang members. Honduran officials have denied this.
San Pedro Sula prison director Elias Aceituno was suspended after the fire, but he told reporters the measure was to ensure an independent investigation.
"Later on, I'll return to my job," he added.
Auxiliary Bishop Romulo Emiliani of the San Pedro Sula Roman Catholic diocese called for an investigation into why the prisoners had not been released.
"If one of the gates had been opened an hour earlier, no one would have died," Emiliani said.
He called the loss of life "one of the worst tragedies ever to occur in our country's prisons.
"I'm upset because most of these were young men ... many of whom had hoped to turn over a new leaf and improve their lives, and who were hoping for a better future," he said.
Itsmania Pineda, who works with gang members, called the prison a "pressure cooker," filled with desperate gang members.
Security minister spokesman Leonel Sauceda said the prison, built for 1,700 inmates, held 2,227.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS