More than 300 inmates perish in blaze

COMAYAGUA (AP):

The prisoners whose scorched bodies were carried out piece by piece yesterday from a charred Honduran prison, had been locked inside an overcrowded penitentiary where most inmates had never been charged, let alone convicted, according to an internal Honduran government report obtained by The Associated Press.

The Honduran government report, which was sent to the United Nations this month, said 57 per cent of some 800 inmates of the Comayagua farm prison north of the Central American country's capital were either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members.

A fire that witnesses said was started by an inmate tore through the prison Tuesday night, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. The death toll stood at 355 up to yesterday afternoon, according to attorney general's spokesman Melvin Duarte, making it the world's deadliest prison fire in a century.

Causes being investigated

Honduran authorities said they are still investigating other possible causes based on prisoner accounts, including that the fire could have been set in collusion with guards to stage a prison break.

"All of this isn't confirmed, but we're looking into it," Duarte said.

Survivors told horrific tales of climbing walls to break the sheet metal roofing and escape, only to see prisoners in other cell blocks being burned alive. Inmates were found stuck to the roofing, their bodies fused to the metal.

From the time firefighters received a call at 10:59 p.m. local time, the rescue was marred by human error and conditions that made the prison ripe for catastrophe.

According to the report, obtained exclusively by the AP, on any given day there were about 800 inmates in a facility built for 500. There were only 51 guards by day and just 12 at night.