Distraught families are demanding information from the Venezuelan authorities about how at least 78 people died in a fire while they were locked in police cells.
Police fired teargas as relatives clashed with police outside the facility in Valencia, Carabobo state, after local officials would confirm only that there had been deaths in Wednesday’s fire.
The fire appears to have broken out during a disturbance at the holding – reportedly designed to hold a maximum of 60 prisoners – with gunfire heard during the riot.
“I don’t know if my son is dead or alive,” Aida Parra, the mother of one of the prisoners inside the facility, told the Spanish news agency EFE. “They haven’t told me anything.”
Juan Miguel Matheus, a deputy in the country’s national assembly, said the information he had was that 68 men and 10 women had died.
Speaking to a local newspaper, Mattheus also criticised the authorities. “Until now they have not released a list of the dead. There are bodies which have not been able to be identified because the bodies are so charred.”
“They have told us nothing. Instead the police have treated us like dogs,” said Lissette Mendoza, mother of 19-year old detainee Yorman Salazar. “He was being held for robbery, but they should not be allowed to take his life as if he were a dog,” she said.
Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said late on Wednesday that 68 people had died in the fire, nearly all of them prisoners. He said four prosecutors would investigate the circumstances.
A Window to Freedom, a non-profit group that monitors conditions in Venezuela’s jails and prisons, said preliminary but unconfirmed information indicated that a riot began when a detainee shot an officer in the leg.
Shortly after, a fire broke out and grew quickly as the flames spread to mattresses in the cells, it said. Rescuers apparently had to break a hole through a prison wall to free some of the prisoners.
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