CARACAS: At least 37 people died in an hours-long prison riot in Venezuela’s southern state of Amazonas, officials said Wednesday. The prosecutors’ office said an investigation had been launched into “the deaths of 37 people” in the facility in the town of Puerto Ayacucho. Two prison-monitoring groups, A Window to Freedom and the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, said the 37 killed were all inmates. “This is the worst riot we’ve had in a preventative detention facility,” Carlos Nieto of A Window to Freedom told Agence France-Presse. The deadliest riot in a prison in Venezuela was in 2013, when 60 people died and more than 150 were wounded in a facility in Uribana, in the western state of Lara.

Source: Manila Times August 17, 2017 01:18 UTC