CARACAS, Venezuela — Frantic families of victims clashed with police and demanded answers on Thursday after a blaze ripped through a Venezuelan police detention center the day before, killing at least 68 in one of the nation’s worst ever prison disasters.
Details of the incident were still emerging, but late Wednesday, the country’s head prosecutor Tarek William Saab confirmed the death count in a tweet and said four investigators had been appointed to “clarify these dramatic events.”
“The chief prosecutor’s office guarantees that we will clear up immediately these painful incidents that have left dozens of families mourning, as well as establish the needed responsibilities,” Saab tweeted.
Venezuela’s nonprofit human rights group, the Observatory of Prisons, said its own internal sources indicated the death toll was even higher than the official tally — placing it at 78, including women who were at the station in the town of Valencia in Carabobo state during visiting hours.
The director of the nonprofit prison watchdog group, Windows for Freedom, said the fire began after an attempted jail break went sour and inmates set fire to their mattresses.
The prisoners immediately began to succumb to the massive amounts of smoke from the burning mattresses in the cramped cells.
“The fire caused so much smoke that people started to die in the enclosed space,” said Carlos Nieta Palma, adding that the detention center had capacity for 35 people yet there were 200 crammed in there.
He said that his sources told him that the deaths were all due to asphyxia from smoke inhalation and the two women among the dead were there on conjugal visits.
Family member waited for almost 12 hours with no information, they said, and fought with police, who used tear gas to push them back.
“I don’t know if my son is dead or alive,” Aida Parra, who said she had last seen her son the previous day, told the Spanish news agency EFE. “They haven’t told me anything.”
In video footage from the scene, one woman who identified herself as the mother of a prisoner railed against police: “What we want is justice. Corrupt police threw gasoline in there … We want justice, we want to know what is happening.”
The fire was one of the worst jail disasters in a country where human rights officials say that prison conditions are among the worst in Latin America. In 1994, a prison fire in the state of Zulia killed at least 100 prisoners. Last August, at least 37 inmates died in a riot in the southern state of Amazonas.
In a statement, the Observatory of Prisons said: “We have been warning of the grave situation of police detention centers that put the lives and personal integrity of the detained at risk … The deaths have to be investigated to define responsibilities, we express our condolences to family members.”
Faiola reported from Miami.
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