Hondurans are mourning the more than 350 people who died when fire swept through an overcrowded prison in the Central American country, leaving charred bodies trapped in locked cells.
A fire believed to have been started by an inmate tore through the prison on Tuesday night, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. Officials confirmed 358 dead, making it the world's deadliest prison fire in a century.
Survivors told horrific tales of climbing walls to break the sheet metal roofing and escape, only to see prisoners in other cell blocks being burned alive. Inmates were found stuck to the roofing, their bodies fused to the metal.
Inside the prison, charred walls and debris showed the path of the fire, which burned through six barracks that had been crammed with 70 to 105 inmates each in four-level bunk beds.
Bodies were found piled up in the bathrooms, where inmates apparently fled to the showers, hoping the water would save them from blistering flames. Prisoners perished clutching each other in bathtubs and curled up in laundry sinks.
Most of the prison fire deaths were caused by smoke inhalation.
"More than 350 dead, it is an approximation. We cannot rule out that it could be a bit higher, but we are checking so we can give an official and precise toll for this tragedy," Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said.
The enormity of the disaster led President Porfirio Lobo to suspend Honduras's top prison officials, including the corrections chief, as well as those at the Comayagua penitentiary, while an investigation is under way.
"We will be carrying out a full investigation to determine what caused this sad and unacceptable tragedy, and to determine who shoulders the blame," Lobo said, adding the officials were suspended to ensure transparency in the probe.
Lobo replaced corrections chief Danilo Orellana with his deputy, Abraham Figueroa.
The inferno broke out at around 10.50pm on Tuesday (1550 AEDT Wednesday), and burned for around three hours before it was brought under control.
Officials were unclear about the cause, at first believing that the blaze was sparked by a short circuit, but later saying it may have been deliberately set by inmates.
Before the tragedy, a frantic inmate phoned the state governor and screamed he was going to burn the place down. After the man, who wasn't identified, lit a mattress on fire a few minutes later, crews said they rushed to the prison, arriving two minutes after a call for help because the firehouse was nearby.
But the handful of guards held them out for a catastrophic 30 minutes, saying they thought the screams inside were a prison break and a riot. When rescuers finally were allowed in, they said they couldn't find keys or guards to unlock the barracks.
Fifteen minutes away, the US military's Southern Command operates Joint Task Force Bravo, where major search and rescue teams and fire squads are on standby. They were never dispatched.
Captain Candace Allen, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Bravo, said they can only send what they're asked for, so throughout the night they sent surgical masks, flashlights and Glowsticks. No one asked for firefighters.
Officials and rescue workers dressed in white hazard suits moved in on Wednesday to remove the charred remains, as distraught relatives wept openly, clinging to each other as they mourned the deaths of their loved ones.
Many blamed prison authorities for moving too slowly to save them. "My son died of asphyxiation there," said Leonidas Medina, 69, at a local hospital.
"The guards wouldn't open the door and they (the inmates) burned to death," he said. "They wouldn't have died if they had just opened the doors."
Prisons in Honduras - and throughout Latin America - are notoriously overcrowded. The country's 24 penal facilities officially have room for 8000 inmates, but actually house 13,000.
The prison in Comayagua, located some 90km north of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, held almost double its official inmate capacity.
The Organization of American States in Washington said it was launching a probe into the disaster.
Governor Paola Castro said her office received a phone call from someone claiming to be an inmate, telling her that another prisoner had set the fire in a suicide bid.
Desperate relatives, frustrated at being left in the dark about the fate of their loved ones, clashed with police and then stormed the prison gates early on Wednesday.
Security forces fired into the air in a bid to stop the unrest, but the relatives burst through a locked gate and flooded into the facility, where they gathered in a front courtyard.
"My brother Roberto Mejia was in unit six," an emotional Glenda Mejia told AFP. "They've told me that the inmates from that unit are all dead."
Officials here expressed sympathy with the relatives' frustration, but called for patience.
"We understand the pain of the families, but we have to follow a process under the law," Bonilla said. "We call for calm. It is a very difficult situation."
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