COMAYAGUA, Honduras: Police and soldiers dragged out the charred remains of convicts in black body bags, hurling them onto a pile outside a Honduran prison where over 350 people died on Tuesday night, choking and screaming as they were engulfed in flames.
As the darkness deepened in Comayagua National Penitentiary, north of the capital Tegucigalpa, the last remaining bereaved family members melted away. But groups of workers continued to stack up bodies, which landed with heavy thuds.
‘The corpses are charred and some of them are stuck on top of each other,’ said Johnny Ordenez, a Honduran soldier lugging the dead. ‘You have to peel them apart like an orange.’
Hondurans already live in the most murderous country on the planet, according to a United Nations report last year. But the Comayagua fire, apparently started by one of the prisoners, was one of the worst prison blazes anywhere in history.
As the inferno raged, some of the 850 or so inmates managed to force their way to safety through the tin roofs of the prison, a dark maze-like structure with narrow open-air hallways lined with white and blue brick walls. But by the time the media were allowed in, there was still evidence of those who did not escape the gutted complex, where the smell of charred flesh hung heavily in the air.
Loaded up onto trailers, the dead were sent to a morgue in Tegucigalpa, where relatives waited expectantly. (UNI)