Chilean prison blaze kills 26 inmates
( 2001-05-22 10:37 ) (7 )

Twenty-six prisoners were burned to death in a northern Chilean jail early on Monday in a blaze police said inmates started in protest but prisoners' relatives and firefighters said was an accident.

Police said the protest at the jail in Iquique, about 1,125 miles (1,800 km) north of Santiago, was apparently linked to the recent self-immolation of an inmate at another Chilean jail -- and played down earlier reports of a prison riot.

President Ricardo Lagos meanwhile said the incident -- one of most deadly incidents in Chilean prison history -- dramatized the need for the government to speed up plans to build more jails to ease overcrowding.

Two inmates and two guards suffered light injuries during the incident, which began early Monday and continued for about two hours before firefighters brought the blaze under control, a police spokesman said.

Lagos vowed the government would speed up plans to double the capacity of Chile's prisons.

"Doubling the capacity of Chile's prison system is the only way we have to tackle this problem," Lagos said in his annual state of the nation address. "These 26 dead are a call for the need to act faster. (There were) 1,700 prisoners in a jail with a capacity for 1,000."

Prison overcrowding spurred a series of peaceful demonstrations and hunger strikes in Chile last year.

FIREFIGHTERS, RELATIVES CITE 'ACCIDENT'

Relatives of the prisoners, who gathered outside the jail after news of the fire broke, said inmates had thrown pieces of paper over the wall stating the fire was an accident and had been caused by an electrical short-circuit.

The messages "said there was no riot. It was a short circuit that caused the fire and the prisoners say they warned the guard on duty ... and he called the anti-riot squad," one relative told local television.

Iquique's fire chief, Federico Petrillo, said there was a delay in the prison authorities' call for help.

"You could say it was an accident," Petrillo said, though he would not specify if a short circuit was the cause.

Police were adamant the prisoners had started the fire themselves, by torching mattresses and other objects.

"The prisoners themselves started the fire. The situation escaped their control," a police spokesman told Reuters. "But there was no prison uprising."

Monday's deadly blaze comes in the wake a string of prison riots and uprisings by thousands of inmates in Brazilian jails in recent months in which dozens have been killed or injured.

In 1999, a fire started during a riot at Iquique injured around 30 people.

Some 80 percent of prisoners held at Iquique jail were convicted of drug-related offenses, according to media reports.