Prison officials say 23 inmates dead after fight in northern Mexico penitentiary

Mexican prison brawl leaves 23 dead

MEXICO CITY — Twenty-three inmates were killed Wednesday morning in a brawl between rival drug gangs at a northern Mexico penitentiary, officials said.

Prison spokeswoman Carla Puente said she did not know the reason for the fight at the facility housing 2,025 inmates in the city of Durango, and officials wouldn’t identify the gangs involved.

The brawl was quelled in about an hour by soldiers and state police officers.

Puente initially reported injuries but later said there were none.

“It’s the result of what’s happening outside the prisons … it’s part of the fight between organized crime groups for control of territory and that is being reflected inside the prisons,” said Carlos Garcia Carranza, president of the Durango state human rights commission.

Garcia Carranza said he recommended that the more violent, drug-cartel associates be moved out of medium security detention centers after a prison fight last August that killed 19 and injured 20 in Gomez Palacio, another city in Durango state.

Organized crime played a role in that fight as well.

More than 60 inmates have died during fierce fights at Mexico’s often overcrowded and loosely run prisons in the past two years. State prison officials frequently complain that they are not equipped to handle violent drug traffickers being held on federal charges.

In October 2008, 21 prisoners died in a fight at a state prison in the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.

And in September 2008, two riots at La Mesa state prison in the border city of Tijuana across from San Diego, California, killed at least 23 people, including two inmates from the U.S.

La Mesa prisoners argued that officials weren’t giving them food and water, but prison officials blamed troublemakers for the violence.