CIUDAD JUÁREZ: Gunmen attacked a jail within the northern Mexican metropolis of Ciudad Juarez on Sunday, leaving 14 individuals useless and permitting 24 inmates to flee, the Chihuahua state prosecutors’ workplace mentioned.
An unknown variety of gunmen aboard armoured automobiles took half within the assault, and the useless included 10 jail guards and safety brokers, the workplace mentioned in an announcement.
Some 5 hours after the daybreak incursion started, safety forces managed to regulate the scenario, which had additionally erupted into combating between inmates inside the sprawling state jail, close to Mexico’s border with the US.
Moments earlier than the assault, armed males fired on municipal police alongside a close-by boulevard, setting off a automotive chase that ended with the seizure of a car and 4 males, the assertion added.
Later, assailants in a Hummer fired on one other group of safety brokers outdoors the jail, it mentioned.
Scenes of chaos ensued as kinfolk of some prisoners waited for New 12 months’s visits outdoors the compound.
Inside, some rioting inmates set hearth to numerous objects and clashed with jail guards, native media reported.
Prosecutors mentioned the outbreak on the jail, the place inmates from differing legal bands and drug cartels are housed in separate cellblocks, additionally left 13 individuals injured.
4 individuals had been detained, prosecutors mentioned, with out specifying in the event that they had been inmates or armed assailants.
Particulars weren’t out there about how the 24 escaped inmates had been capable of flee.
Historical past of violent clashes
Prosecutors within the metropolis, which sits throughout the border from El Paso, Texas, mentioned they had been investigating the motive of the assault.
Ciudad Juarez was the scene of years of violent clashes between safety forces and the rival Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels, which have left hundreds useless over the previous decade.
The jail itself has seen a number of breakouts of combating and riots, together with a bloody March 2009 episode that left 20 useless.
In August 2022, a conflict between rival gangs left three prisoners useless.
Based on a February 2022 report by the State Human Rights Fee, greater than 3,700 individuals are detained within the jail, above its most capability of three,135.
Mexican detention centres, significantly these run by the state, endure from continual overcrowding and violence, which has worsened lately because of battle between legal teams.