A group of 132 inmates escaped from a Mexican prison near the US border on Monday, fleeing through a tunnel dug in an old carpentry workshop, the state prosecutor’s office said.
The escape sparked a massive manhunt, with federal police and the Mexican army deployed on roads and highways near the correctional facility in Piedras Negras, a city bordering the Texas town of Eagle Pass.
The US Border Patrol was also taking part in the search, Coahuila state attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria told Milenio television.
The prison’s director, security chief and shift guard were questioned over the escape and authorities have asked a judge to issue a detention order against the three, the state attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Ramos Gloria told reporters that the escape took place at 2:15pm local time, but that it took about an hour for prison guards to notice it, according to the newspaper El Universal.
The tunnel used by the prisoners was 2.9m deep, 1.2m wide and 7m long, and its exit hole was at the prison’s northern tower, the statement said.
After emerging from the tunnel, the inmates “cut a wire fence from where, according to prison authorities, the convicts got out one by one and reached a vacant lot,” it said.
The evidence gathered by prosecutors includes fragments of a BlackBerry phone, pieces of a SIM card, a pair of flip-flops, two other flip-flops, three 1.20m-long pieces of rope, an electric wire and a broken padlock.
The prosecutor’s office said 86 of the inmates were in prison for federal crimes, while the other 46 faced different charges.
The state government offered rewards of 200,000 pesos (US$15,600) for information leading to the capture of each inmate.
Authorities in Coahuila said that a special police unit killed four suspects in a clash in the town of Castanos four hours after the Piedras Negras escape was reported, and that there are indications that the dead were inmates.
Several mass prison breaks have taken place in Mexico since 2010.
The biggest to date was on Dec. 17, 2010, when 141 inmates escaped from the Nuevo Laredo prison in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
In February, 30 members of the Zetas drug gang escaped from a prison in the northern state of Nuevo Leon during a prison massacre that left 44 inmates from the rival Gulf cartel dead.
Some prison guards confessed to taking part in the plot.
Mexico’s prisons are often the scene of riots and murders, which left 171 people dead last year, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
The Piedras Negras prison, with a capacity for 1,000 prisoners, was housing 734 inmates when the escape took place, Ramos Gloria was quoted as saying.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS