At least 53 people have died after the fire unleashed last Tuesday during a riot in the prison of the city of Tuluá, located in western Colombia, according to the Secretary of Health of the department of Valle del Cauca, María Cristina Lesmes.
The figure has risen after one of the inmates injured during the fire lost his life at the Cali Hospital, where he was admitted. The incident leaves a balance of 25 injured, after the prisoners set fire to some mattresses in pavilion 8 to prevent the agents from stopping the riot, as reported by ‘El Espectador’.
Among the deceased are INPEC prison officials, according to what the director of the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC), General Tito Castellanos, told Caracol Radio, who reported that the fire occurred around 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday ( local time).
"There are patients with more than 60 percent of their body with burns and others affected by the inhalation of carbon dioxide during the fire"explained for his part Lesmes, who has also called on the population of Valle to raise money to help more than 90 inmates who have remained "without any protection".
Some 1,200 prisoners are confined inside this pavilion. Castellanos detailed on Tuesday that 49 inmates died inside the prison and another two after being evacuated to hospitals.
In addition, the Corporation for Interns and their Families of Colombia (Corpifamco) has detailed that some inmates would have died during a fight. "It is known that around 10:30-11:00 p.m. (local time), there were already deaths from a sharp weapon and the forensic police will have to corroborate this in the autopsies."has detailed the organization in a statement.
For his part, the outgoing president of Colombia, Iván Duque, then went to social networks to lament what happened in the Tuluá prison and show his solidarity with the victims. In turn, he confirmed that he is in contact with General Castellanos and that he gave instructions to begin the investigations that would allow "clarify this terrible situation".
The president-elect, Gustavo Petro, also expressed his condolences for what happened and regretted that "the Colombian State has looked at prison as a space for revenge and not for rehabilitation". In this sense, she advocated a "complete rethink" of the penitentiary system for greater "humanization" from jail and a "dignity" of the prisoner
The case is reminiscent of the one that occurred on March 21, 2020 in the famous La Modelo prison in Bogotá, when around twenty prisoners died and more than a hundred were injured as a result of a riot organized to demand protection and prevention measures against the coronavirus. .