World
A battle between rival groups at a prison near Monterrey in northern Mexico has left 49 inmates dead.
Nuevo Leon state Governor Jaime Rodriguez said 12 other people were injured in Topo Chico jail after prisoners fought with "sharp weapons, bats and sticks". A fire was also started in a storage room. Officials say the situation is under control and no inmates escaped. Crowds of relatives outside the jail blocked roads, demanding information. Some threw sticks and rocks and tried to pull the prison gate open as riot police blocked their way. "They haven't told us anything," said the mother of one inmate, who gave her name only as Ernestina. "They said that until there is order they won't let us in. Everything is in disorder, and nobody is telling us anything." The incident comes just days before Pope Francis is due to visit a prison in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, an area notorious for violence between drugs cartels.
Overcrowding is a major problem in Mexican prisons, which have seen deadly riots and violence in the past. At the same prison in Monterrey, three inmates were stabbed to death in February 2012. That same month, 44 inmates were killed and 30 escaped in a riot at a prison in Apodaca, near Monterrey. Security officials blamed the violence on a fierce rivalry between drug cartels inside that prison. In 2011, the head of security at the Topo Chico prison was found dead and mutilated. Authorities said that a note, presumably from a drug cartel, was left with the body. "It seems like we haven't learned our lesson," said Martin Carlos Sanchez, who directs a prison reform and monitoring program. For years, advocates had warned that the situation at the Topo Chico prison was out of control, Sanchez told CNN en Español's "Conclusiones." "We think there should be stronger, more robust strategies, so we don't reach this point, which is truly total abandonment," he said. "These violent acts speak of the urgent need to do something in prisons."
