At least 60 dead, 120 injured, in prison riot in Venezuela

Fierce gunbattles between inmates and National Guard troops at a Venezuelan prison has killed at least 61people, a hospital director said Saturday. About 120 more people were wounded in one of the deadliest prison riots in the nation’s recent history.

Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela said Saturday that officials had begun evacuating inmates from the Uribana prison in Barquisimeto and transferring them to other facilities, but she did not provide an official death toll.

However, Dr Ruy Medina, director of Central Hospital in the city of Barquisimeto, told The Associated Press that the number of dead had risen to 61. He initially told Venezuelan news media after the Friday uprising that about 50 were killed.

Medina said that nearly all of the injuries were from gunshots and that 45 of the estimated 120 people who were wounded remained hospitalised. Some underwent surgeries for their wounds.

Relatives wept outside the prison during the violence, and cried at the morgue on Saturday as they waited to identify bodies.

Nayibe Mendez, the mother of a 22-year-old inmate in the prison, told the AP that she was able to talk with her son by phone and that he was uninjured.