Gunmen attacked a prison in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez on Sunday, leaving 14 people dead and allowing 24 inmates to escape, the Chihuahua State Prosecutors’ Office said.
An unknown number of gunmen aboard armored vehicles took part in the attack, and the dead included 10 prison guards and security agents, the office said in a statement.
About five hours after the dawn incursion began, security forces managed to control the situation, which had also erupted into fighting between inmates within the state prison, near Mexico’s border with the US.
Photo: AFP
Moments before the attack, armed men fired on municipal police along a nearby boulevard, setting off a car chase that ended with the seizure of a vehicle and four men, the statement added.
Assailants in a Hummer vehicle later fired on another group of security agents outside the prison, it said.
Scenes of chaos ensued as relatives of some prisoners waited for New Year’s Day visits outside the compound.
Inside, some rioting inmates set fire to objects and clashed with prison guards, local news reports said.
Prosecutors said the outbreak of violence at the prison, where inmates from different criminal gangs and drug cartels are housed in separate cell blocks, also left 13 people injured.
Four people were detained, prosecutors said, without specifying if they were inmates or armed assailants.
Details were not immediately available about how the 24 inmates were able to flee or who they were.
Prosecutors in the city, which sits across the border from El Paso, Texas, said they were investigating the motive of the attack.
Ciudad Juarez has been the scene of years of violent clashes between security forces and the rival Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels, which have left thousands of people dead over the past decade.
The prison has seen multiple outbreaks of fighting and riots, including an episode in March 2009 that left 20 people dead.
In August last year, a clash between rival gangs left three prisoners dead.
A report by the State Human Rights Commission in February last year said that more than 3,700 people are detained in the prison, above its maximum capacity of 3,135.
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