A fire at a prison in northern Honduras killed 103 inmates yesterday, all of them members of a violent street gang the government has targeted in a controversial crackdown.
Police said the early-morning fire at the prison in the northern city of San Pedro Sula followed an explosion caused by a short circuit. Some inmates speculate prisoners threw a homemade incendiary device, or fire bomb, in the gang members' cell area.
The fire spread rapidly through an area housing members of the infamous Mara Salvatrucha youth gang. Most died from suffocation and about 25 more were being treated in hospital.
About 50 bodies, many of them charred, lay in rows on the floor of an outhouse in the ramshackle jail. Most were semi-naked and bore tattoos often sported by Central American gang members.
It was the worst jail disaster in Honduras and the second time that dozens of gang members have been killed inside a Honduran prison in a little over a year. Inmates complained that security forces were slow to help and family members suspected it was no accident.
About 200 people gathered outside the prison and screamed: "Murderers, murderers."
Inmates who survived the fire said guards at the prison shouted abuse at the prisoners trapped inside a burning ward. "The police were saying to us, 'It's better that you die, dogs,"' said inmate Javier Hernandez, who is serving 17 years for a gang murder. He said he stayed alive by crawling into a ventilation shaft in a toilet.
Other inmates said guards opened up cells two hours after the fire started.
All of the dead were members of the Mara Salvatrucha, one of two dominant gangs that operate in this poor Central American country. More than 1,000 suspected gang members have been arrested and sent to jail since President Ricardo Maduro ordered a crackdown last August.