Prison brawl claims 31 lives
Fighting between inmates left at least 31 dead and 13 wounded in a jail holding alleged drug gang members in northeast Mexico, authorities have said.
Police and soldiers surrounded Santa Amalia jail, in Altamira on the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually regained control, said a police spokesman.
Prisoners used makeshift weapons in the clash, which broke out in the men’s section of the jail in the south of the border state of Tamaulipas. Thirteen inmates suspected of involvement in the fight were detained, state authorities said.
The jail was designed to hold 2,000 inmates but had a population of more than 3,000. It lies in an area where the rival Gulf and Zetas drug gangs have been locked in a bloody turf war. Many of the inmates were doing time on drug-related charges.
Prison riots and jailbreaks are common in Mexico, where some 230,000 prisoners are behind bars, with 25 per cent in overpopulated prisons. Tamaulipas, which houses some 7,800 inmates, has seen a wave of breakouts and clashes in the recent years.
