A prison break in the Saint-Marc region of western Haiti resulted in a clash that left 11 inmates dead on Friday, police said.
Haitian police spokesman Michel Ange Louis Jeune said the clash occurred when inmates tried to escape from the prison, which houses 540 inmates.
Jeune confirmed that 11 prisoners died during the incident and that one prisoner was recaptured.
Local newspaper “Le Nouvelliste” reported that prison guards went on strike to demand better working conditions, which may have played a role in the escape.
Government commissioner Vension Francois expressed concern about a possible “mutiny”, suggesting the possibility of the complicity of the guards.
Videos circulating on social media showed smoke and fire pouring out of the prison, and gunfire was reported nearby.
It is not known how many prisoners were in the prison at the time of the escape.
This is the third prison break in Haiti this year. In March, gangs staged a mass escape from the country’s two largest prisons in the capital, Port-au-Prince, as part of a series of attacks that eventually led to the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Haitian prisons are overcrowded and unsanitary. The country’s broken justice system often leaves prisoners in pretrial detention for years, and a United Nations report found that only 1,892 of Haiti’s 11,816 prisoners were convicted of a crime last year, AA writes.
