At least 19 persons have died following an armed attack on a prison in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez, during which at least 25 prisoners managed to escape.
The dead are 10 prison employees, seven inmates and two attackers. The death toll had earlier been given as 14.
Armed assailants on Sunday raided the prison, located in the same city where civilians were killed in violence between rival gangs in August. Authorities were still searching for the escaped leader of a criminal group, Los Mexicles, who authorities say managed to escape.
Luis Cresencio Sandoval, Mexico’s defence minister, told reporters that “the prison was overcrowded” and that state authorities could have made a request to transfer excess prisoners through a federal scheme.
It was still unclear why that request was not made.
Mexican prisons are often the scene of bloody incidents. The North American country plagued by drug crime and corruption is estimated to have at least 225,000 prisoners, about 40 percent of them on remand, and a trial can take years.
