Honduras prison fire: President vows full inquiry

Honduras President Porfirio Lobo has pledged a "full and transparent" investigation after a fire at a jail killed more than 300 inmates.

Mr Lobo also suspended local and national prison officials while the inquiry into the "unacceptable" tragedy at the jail in Comayagua was conducted.
Many victims were burned or suffocated to death in their cells.
Officials fear the death toll could rise to more than 350, as dozens of inmates are still unaccounted for.
The authorities are trying to establish whether the blaze in the overcrowded prison was started deliberately by an inmate or was caused by an electrical fault.
Desperate for news, relatives and friends of prisoners later clashed with police as they tried to force their way into the prison compound.
Police responded by firing warning shots and tear gas to disperse the crowd.
'We will all die here!" Mr Lobo promised to "find those responsible" for the disaster.

Fire survivor: 'We had to break on to the roof to be able to get out'

"It will be an independent investigation monitored by international observers," the president said.
The fire in Comayagua, about 100km (60 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa, broke out late on Tuesday night and took more than an hour to be brought under control.
Dozens of prisoners were trapped in their cells and were burned beyond recognition.
Comayagua firefighters' spokesman Josue Garcia said there were "hellish" scenes at the prison and that desperate inmates had rioted in a bid to escape the flames.
"We couldn't get them out because we didn't have the keys and couldn't find the guards who had them," he said.
One prisoner, who managed to escape, later told reporters that he first had heard "the screams of the [inmates] on fire and everyone just started fearing for their lives".

"The only thing that we were able to do was start breaking the roof apart so we could go out from above. We started ripping apart the ceiling above us."

Other survivors told investigators that one of the inmates started the fire by lighting fire to his bedding. They said he screamed "We will all die here!"
Prison service head, Daniel Orellana, confirmed that the investigators were looking into this version of events.
"We have two hypotheses. One is that a prisoner set fire to a mattress and the other one is that there was a short-circuit in the electrical system," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Honduran media reported that there had been a riot in the prison before the fire broke out.
'Shots fired' Lucy Marder, who heads the forensic services in Comayagua, said that 356 people on the prison roster were unaccounted for on Wednesday.

Survivors have spoken about "hellish" scenes inside the Comayagua prison

"The majority could be dead, though others could have suffered burns, escaped or survived," Ms Marder said.
It was feared many inmates had fled.
Amid the confusion, relatives gathered outside the prison to try to get information.
"I'm looking for my brother. We don't know what's happened to him and they won't let us in," Arlen Gomez told Honduran radio.
Local hospitals are treating dozens of people for burns and other injuries.
Some of the injured have been taken to Tegucigalpa for treatment, among them 30 people with severe burns.
Firefighters said they had struggled to enter the prison because shots had been fired.
Prisons in Honduras, which has the world's highest murder rate, are often seriously overcrowded and hold many gang members.

Honduras prison fire one of world's worst

The fire, which started at 10.50pm Tuesday at the Comayagua National Penitentiary, took firefighters three hours to douse.

Guards fired their guns repeatedly to keep screaming trapped inmates from escaping.

"It is a day of deep pain for Honduras," President Porfirio Lobo said in a brief televised address, acknowledging that a criminal hand may have been behind the disaster.

"We will conduct an investigation to determine what provoked this lamentable and unacceptable tragedy and find those responsible," Lobo said.

The death toll climbed throughout the day. At noon, Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said he thought that "more than 300" were dead. National Prison Director Danilo Orellana later told Honduran media that the toll had surpassed 350. At least one woman who was in the prison illegally was said to be among the fatalities.
Hundreds of other prisoners were burned in the blaze or injured when they broke through a roof and jumped to safety, hospital officials said.
Bonilla said the fire underscored "the dramatic situation in terms of security" that afflicts the Central American nation, which is on a major narcotics corridor and has been overrun by organised crime.
"We have lost control to a certain point of actions that we must forcefully take ... in benefit of Honduran society," Bonilla said outside the prison.
Anguished relatives banged on the gates and threw rocks at riot police and soldiers who were blocking access to the prison in Comayagua, a city about 90 kilometres north of Tegucigalpa, the country's capital. Police responded with tear gas. Gunfire also rang out.
Riot police also closed off all public access to the morgue in Tegucigalpa where bodies were taken as relatives clamoured for information about the identities of the victims.
Bonilla said investigators were combing through the charred scene to determine what sparked the blaze, which swept through the prison's cellblock six.
Orellana, the prisons director, said early indications were that "an inmate may have caused the fire by setting his mattress alight. Some of his cellmates said that he shouted, 'We will all die here' and within five minutes everything was burning."
Photos showed metal cell bars that had twisted and melted from the heat.
Security agents outside the one-story prison wore surgical masks as the stench of burned flesh lingered. White body bags piled up outside the yellow entrance to the building.
"When the fire started, we shouted at (the guards) with keys but they wouldn't open for us. In fact, they fired at us," inmate Ruben Garcia told Honduras' El Heraldo newspaper.
As the raging fire consumed more of the prison, guards ushered survivors out of the jail. Many emerged shirtless, bearing burn marks on their tattooed torsos.
Injured prisoners were taken to hospitals in Comayagua and Tegucigalpa.
Chile sent a team of forensic specialists to help identify the victims, but authorities said the process could take days.
"The majority of the victims are unrecognisable," said Daniela Ferrera of the State Attorney General's Office.

President Lobo said he'd barred national prison authorities from taking part in the investigation of the fire to ensure that the probe was transparent and thorough.

At least two human rights organisations - the private Human Rights Watch and the official Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - called on Honduras to ensure that its prisoners are kept in safe conditions.

In a statement, the commission said it had made "an urgent call on the state to adopt necessary measures so that this tragedy can be duly investigated and avoid its repetition."

Honduras' 24 prisons house 13,000 inmates, far more than their 8000-inmate capacity, and corruption among guards and wardens - in controlling relatives' access to inmates and allowing entry of food and other goods - is said to be rampant.

Fires have broken out regularly in the penitentiaries. In May 2004, a fire at a San Pedro Sula prison killed 107 inmates, most of them members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang. A year earlier, 68 inmates died in an El Porvenir prison fire near La Ceiba on the north coast.

Others - desperate for news - tried to break into the prison. Police had to fire warning shots into the air to stop the crowds.