Colombian prison riots kill 51, injure 24 Colombian city of Touloua on Tuesday.
BOGOTA [Colombia], June 29 (ANI): At least 51 inmates were killed and 24 others, including 24 guards, were injured in a prison fire in the western Colombian city of Touloua on Tuesday. On the mattress
A riot broke out inside a Colombian prison on Tuesday morning after a chaotic scene unfolded inside the penitentiary.
Colombian Justice Minister Wilson Ruiz said the fight between the detainees began around 2 a.m. (local time).
One inmate set fire to a mattress during an altercation and the fire spread across the prison branch, Ruiz told a news conference, CNN reported.
“The pensioners tried to deal with it themselves, but the flames were very strong and we had to wait for firefighters to come to control the situation,” Ruiz said.
The prison is a mid-security sentence where detainees either receive short sentences or end the last few months of their imprisonment, Ruiz said.
Colombian prisons are notoriously full. On average, most are 20 percent above capacity, Ruiz said. The penitentiary that caught fire in Tolua has over 17 percent of its capacity, making it one of the least populous prisons in the country, he added.
The incident marked one of the deadliest such incidents in the country’s recent history, CNN reported.
Prison fights and riots are not uncommon in Colombia and neighboring countries.
In March 2020, 24 prisoners died in riots at the Picota Penitentiary in Bogota as they protested the coronavirus system in the penal system.
Last year, more than 50 people were killed in a Brazilian prison – 16 of whom were beheaded. And in 2018, many people were killed in a prison fire in Venezuela. (ANI)