Thirty flee during Mexican prison riot

Authorities investigating one of Mexico's deadliest prison riots in recent years said on Monday that 30 inmates had escaped during the violence.

“In the midst of the riot and disorder inside the prison, a group of 30 inmates succeeded in escaping the penitentiary,” the governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, Rodrigo Medina, said at a news conference. Four senior prison officials and 18 guards had been relieved of their duties and were under investigation for possible complicity in the mass escape.

He added that the escaped prisoners belonged to the brutal Zetas drug gang and those who died were their bitter rivals from the Gulf cartel - two gangs which have spread fear and violence across the region in recent years.

Clashes erupted at Nuevo Leon's Apodaca prison early on Sunday, igniting deadly riots in the overcrowded facility 30km north of Monterrey, the state capital. At least 44 inmates were killed, as inmates in the prison's cellblock “Delta” attacked each other with knives and clubs, state security officials said. Authorities had said on Sunday that the riot may have started as a diversion to cover a prison escape.
Medina released names and pictures of the fugitives, and posted rewards of up to 10-million pesos for information leading to their capture. The Mexican riot came just days after a deadly inferno in a jail in Honduras, again highlighting terrible overcrowding in Latin American prisons. Rampant drug trafficking, gang members seeking to settle scores and official corruption have turned prisons into human tinder boxes. The prison population in Mexico and Central America has swollen in line with the region's increasingly important role in the cocaine trafficking trade, meaning outdated facilities are straining at the seams.

Families gathered outside the Apodaca prison, located 30km from the northern city of Monterrey, awaiting news of loved ones in a desperate scene, with some women fainting. State security spokesperson Jorge Domene told reporters on Sunday most of the deaths were from stab wounds and traumas from blunt weapons. It was one of the deadliest riots in recent years in Mexico's notoriously violent prisons.

click to enlarge PRISON BREAK: Relatives of inmates wait for news of their relatives as police officers stand guard behind a fence inside a state prison in Apodaca after 44 people died in clashes opposing rival gangs