Prison fire kills hundreds in Honduras

Prison fire in Honduras kills hundreds of prisoners

A prison fire has left at least 300 inmates dead in Honduras on Wednesday.

Local authorities said 356 of the 852 prisoners in the jail facility in Comayagua (about 75 kilometers north of the capital Tegucigalpa) are unaccounted for.

"The majority could be dead, though others could have suffered burns, escaped or survived," said Lucy Marder, chief of forensic medicine for the prosecutor's office, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Josue Garcia, a spokesperson of the Comayagua fire department, described the scene as "horrific" while trying to put out the blaze. He said inmates are rioting in attempts to escape and "some 100 prisoners were burned to death or suffocated in their cells."

He added, "We couldn't get them out because we didn't have the keys and couldn't find the guards who had them."

Officials are still investigating what caused the fire.

"We have two hypotheses, one is that a prisoner set fire to a mattress and the other one is that there was a short circuit in the electrical system," Daniel Orellana, head of the prison system, told the Reuters.