At least 272 dead in Honduras prison fire

Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images

Anxious relatives of inmates wait outside the National Prison of Comayagua, after a fire killed scores of inmates.

msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated at 4:45 a.m. ET: At least 272 people were killed and scores wounded when a fire broke out overnight at a prison in Honduras, forensic service officials said Wednesday.

"This is a preliminary report, there could be a lot more deaths," Lucy Marder, the head of forensic services in the city of Comayagua, which is about 45 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

"In the cells there are more than 100 charred bodies," a fire spokesman told Reuters earlier, adding that there were reports of shooting inside the jail late Tuesday, when the fire was believed to have started.

Officials were investigating the cause of the blaze, but it could have been triggered by rioting prisoners or an electrical short-circuit, the head of the national prison system, Danilo Orellana, said.

The fire broke out at 10:55 p.m. local time (11:55 p.m. ET) in the prison, called Granja Penal, Josue Garcia, a spokesman for the Comayagua fire department said, according to EFE news agency.

Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images

Firefighters enter the prison after the fire broke out late Tuesday.

A nurse at the Santa Teresa Hospital in Comayagua told journalists that about 30 prisoners, many with third- or fourth-degree burns, had been treated at the hospital, according to EFE. Other wounded people were sent to hospitals in Tegucigalpa, EFE said.

"There are many bodies piled up inside the (prison) units who presumably wanted to but couldn't escape the fire," Garcia said, according to EFE.

Some of the prisoners managed to get out by breaking through the prison's roof and jumping off the building, EFE said. 

Authorities fear that many inmates ran away during the blaze, the AP quoted Hector Ivan Mejia, spokesman for the government's security secretariat, as saying.