30 killed in Bolivia prison gang war; child among the dead

Thirty people, including an infant, are dead after a gang battle erupted Friday inside the Palmasola maximum-security prison in Bolivia's eastern lowlands. Witnesses say inmates used propane gas tanks as flamethrowers to attack other prisoners.

Officials said an 18-month-old child was among the dead. Bolivia faced criticism from the United Nations just two months ago over a policy that allows young children to live with their parents in prison.

About a dozen children had been evacuated from the prison by midday Friday.

Another 60 people were injured in the fighting as inmates in one cell block attacked a neighboring block with knives, machetes and gas canisters, Interior Minister Carlos Romero said.

Romero said the fight in the prison, located outside the regional capital of Santa Cruz, was over leadership and space. Inmates knocked a hole in a wall between the two cell blocks and opened the valves on gas tanks to use them as flamethrowers, he said. Straw mattresses caught fire, and the flames spread.

"The victims were trapped in the fire," Romero said.

Palmasola is Bolivia's largest prison, and officials are calling this incident the country's worst episode of prison violence.

It took several hours for police and guards to put out the fire and gain control over the violence, which took place in a wing that holds some of the facility’s most dangerous prisoners. Most of the dead were on the second floor of the two-story cell block, Romero said.

The local representative of Bolivia's independent Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, Maria Inez Galvez, told The Associated Press that she and other members of her organization who were allowed to enter the prison saw "bodies of burned men, some of the wounded with burned hands, others with burned faces."

"We didn't know how to begin to help," she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She said that by the time she arrived at 8 a.m. the most seriously injured had been evacuated. Hospital officials said many had second- and third-degree burns.

"We also saw a man who had burns and got up and grabbed a police officer's weapon in order to get taken to the hospital," Galvez said.

There were not enough police available to escort wounded prisoners to hospitals to get medical attention, she said.

Galvez said she was told the fight was over the refusal of the gang in one cell block to pay extortion fees to its rivals in the other block, who attacked around dawn while most inmates were sleeping.

Some inmates jumped off a second-story roof to save themselves. TV images showed naked inmates stretched out on the floor of a prison block, many complaining of burns, after police regained control of the prison.

Although no guns were seized, officials said they found bullet casings. Witnesses reported hearing shots.

As in many Latin American prisons, inmates largely control the inside of Palmasola, which holds about 3,500 prisoners. More than four in five are still awaiting trial.

Weapons and drugs are typically available inside, and businesses operate under the protection of gang leaders. Former inmates say almost anything -- including cell phones and larger living spaces -- can be obtained in a prison like Palmasola for a fee.

Outside the prison on Friday, relatives of inmates wept and shouted demands for a list of victims. Some angrily complained to journalists that police did nothing to try to save the lives of burn victims.

Romero, the interior minister, presented five alleged leaders of the riot to the media and said that another 50 inmates are in isolation for their alleged roles in the violence.

He acknowledged that inmates ran the prison internally, and he called for a reform of the penitentiary system to "recover state control."

President Evo Morales expressed consternation over the deaths, in a statement carried by the state news agency ABI, and said he was ordering a thorough investigation.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press