JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – A massive fire has engulfed a mass prison near the Indonesian capital early Wednesday and killed at least 41 inmates, two of them foreigners serving a drug sentence and injuring 80 people month.
Television footage showed firefighters struggling to extinguish the orange flames as black smoke billowed from the compound. Indonesian Red Cross officials evacuated the victims to ambulances and dozens of bodies in orange bags were deposited in a room in Tangerang Prison on the outskirts of Jakarta.
Most of the 41 murders were drug convicts, including two men from South Africa and Portugal, but also a convicted terrorist and a murderer, Indonesia’s Justice and Human Rights Minister Yasona Laoly told reporters.
He expressed his deep condolences to the families of the victims and pledged to provide the best treatment for the injured victims.
“This is a tragedy that worries us all,” Laoly said. “We are working closely with all relevant parties to investigate the causes of the fire.”
Preliminary investigation into the cause of the fire, which began around 1:45 a.m., pointed to a short circuit in one of the 19 cells in the prison’s C2 block, Jakarta police chief Fadil said. Imran. Block C2 was full of 122 convicts.
After extinguishing the fire, hundreds of police and soldiers were deployed around the prison to prevent the escape of the prisoners, Imran told reporters near the scene.
“The situation is now under control,” said Imran, who added that at least 41 prisoners died and 80 were injured.
Eight are hospitalized for severe burns and nine with minor injuries are being treated at a prison clinic, the justice and human rights ministry said. Another 64, many suffering from smoke inhalation, were evacuated to a mosque on the premises.
The Tangerang prison was designed to house 1,225 inmates, but has more than 2,000, said Rika Aprianti, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s corrections department.
He said 15 prison officers guarding the cell block were not unharmed.
Laoly vowed to make efforts to prevent a similar tragedy, including solving electrical problems in 477 prisons across the nation’s vast archipelago.
Prison breaks and riots that caused fires are common in Indonesia, where overcrowding has become a problem in poorly funded prisons and a large number of people arrested in a war on drugs and illicit drugs. legal.
In April last year, inmates were angered by restrictions on family visits and the early release of 115 other inmates to curb the spread of the coronavirus set fire to a prison on the island of Sulawesi. In early 2020, inmates set fire to a Banda Aceh prison during a riot.
No deaths were reported from those fires.