A fight between rival gangs led to a fire that swept through a Dominican Republic prison today, killing 133 inmates in the deadliest incident in the history of the Caribbean country's prisons.
Efforts to rescue the prisoners from the blaze at the prison in the eastern city of Higuey were hampered by a broken lock, officials said.
Rival gangs fighting for control of the prison attacked each other with guns and knives last night, officials said. The blaze broke out early today as prisoners set fire to their bedding.
Prison guards said they tried to open the cellblock where the fire was raging but prisoners had damaged the lock, prisons director Juan Ramon De la Cruz Martinez said.
Police Chief Manuel de Jesus Perez Sanchez ordered the arrest of the prison's security chief.
The disaster was the worst in the history of prisons in the Dominican Republic, where prisons are often overcrowded.
Twenty-nine inmates were killed in a riot and fire at a prison in the city of La Vega in September 2002.
The State Department, which issued its annual report on human rights around the world last week, said prison conditions in the Dominican Republic range from "poor to harsh."
It said prisons were seriously overcrowded and sometimes out of the control of the authorities, effectively operated by armed inmates.
The Dominican Republic is a Caribbean country of nearly nine million people that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.