A fire started during a riot at a Venezuelan police station kills 68

A fire started by inmates trying to escape a Venezuelan police station killed 68 people Wednesday.

Officers used tear gas to fight off the distraught relatives of victims as they tried to get information about loved ones. One monitoring group blamed the authorities for the tragedy in Valencia, a town in the state of Carabobo about 100 miles from Caracas.

Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Wednesday 68 people died during a fire that erupted in the detention cells following a prisoner riot.

Saab confirmed that an investigation has begun and that four prosecutors had been appointed to establish exactly what happened.

Saab said that almost all of the dead were inmates, but two female visitors were also killed.

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Though no official account of what happened has been released, a group called Una Ventana a la Libertad (A Window on Freedom), which monitors such incidents, said a police officer was shot in the leg by an inmate.

Soon after mattresses were set ablaze and the fire quickly spread.

The group’s director said the minister in charge of prison services, Iris Varela, was to blame.

“We want to directly hold Minister Varela and the Ministry of Penitentiary Service responsible for this fact that has just occurred in the Carabobo Police. This is a situation that we have been denouncing for several years,” Carlos Nieto Palma said in a statement posted on its website.

The tragedy is the latest incident in one of the country’s police stations or detention centers that are overcrowded due to Venezuela burgeoning prison population amid an ongoing economic meltdown.

In August last year, a riot in police holding cells left 37 dead in Amazonas state; in March 14 bodies were found buried in a mass grave in a jail in Guarico state.

Cover image: Relatives of detainees in the police headquarters of Carabobo, in the city of Valencia in Carabobo state, remain outside the police station waiting to find out if their detained relatives is still alive. (Roman Camacho/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)