LA PAZ, Bolivia - A prison melee among competing gangs left 30 people dead including an 18-month-old baby in Bolivia's eastern lowlands, on Friday, witnesses said many burned to death after several inmates utilized propane gas tanks as flame-throwers.
The incident in Palmasola prison, nestled outside Santa Cruz, the capital region in that area, also severely injured at least 60 people, said a statement from the national ombudsman's office.
Despite after the dead bodies have been delivered to hospital morgues, the police has not released information on the death toll of the gangs involved.
Interior Minister Carlos Romero added that the fight between two cell blocks involved the use of machetes, knives, and gas canisters. He said that the conflict was due to leadership issues inside the prison.
Romero explained how several prisoners were burned in the course of the conflict, noting that the inmates of one cell block allegedly bore a large whole in the wall that separated them from the opposite side's inmates. The valves of the gas tanks were opened in order for the first group of inmates to put the others aflame, and since there were straw mattresses on the other end, the inmates were ultimately burned. "The victims were trapped in the fire," he added.
It took several hours for the police and the guards to extinguish the flame and stub the prison melee, which happened on the other wing of the two-story block, where the most notorious prisoners are kept.
Police Chief Alberto Aracena said that among the 30 people who died in the incident was an unnamed little child. Earlier, the United Nations had questioned Bolivia's policy of allowing little children to stay inside the prison cells with their parents.
All of the almost one dozen children were evacuated from the said prison by midday.
On the other hand, Local Representative of the Permanent Assembly Maria Inez Galvez told the press that they saw the "bodies of burned men" upon entering the prison premises. "We didn't know how to begin to help," Galvez said.
Palmasola is the largest prison in Bolivia, and the event that happened earlier today was dubbed the worst prison violence episode in its history.
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