A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison near Indonesia’s capital early Wednesday, killing at least 41 inmates and injuring 80 others.
The fires had been extinguished for about two hours and hundreds of police and soldiers were deployed around the prison to prevent prisoners from escaping, Jakarta Police Chief Fadil Imran told reporters near the scene.
Police and soldiers were deployed around the prison to assure there were no inmates looking to escape during the fire extinguishing.
Televised footage showed firefighters battling to extinguish orange flames while black smoke billowed from the compound. Dozens of bodies in orange bags were laid in a room of Tangerang prison on the outskirts of Jakarta.
Police and hospital officials store body bags of dead victims at a morgue in a local general hospital in Tangerang.
“The situation is now under control,” Imran said, adding that at least 41 inmates were killed and 80 are hospitalized, eight of them with severe burns.
A police vehicle is seen outside Tangerang Hospital, where the remains of people killed in a fire at Tangerang Prison are kept.
Cells were locked at the time, the Minister said, but with the fire raging uncontrollably, "some rooms couldn't be opened."
Authorities are still investigating the cause but the preliminary investigation pointed to a short circuit in one of the block’s cell, Imran said.
Tangerang prison was designed to house 1,225 inmates but has more than 2,000, said Rika Aprianti, spokesperson for the corrections department at the Justice Ministry. Block C, where the fire occurred, was stuffed full of 122 convicts.
She said 15 prison officers guarding the area were unhurt.
Jailbreaks and riots that led to fire are common in Indonesia, where overcrowding has become a problem in prisons that are struggling with poor funding and large numbers of people arrested in a war on illegal drugs.
SOURCE
Indonesia's Law and Human Rights Minister, Yasonna Laoly told local television, that two foreign nationals (a South African and a Portuguese) are amongst the 41 killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AVylcNgfuY
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