DURANGO, Mexico: Eleven prisoners and six guards were killed Tuesday in armed clashes at a prison in northern Mexico that erupted when inmates attempted a jailbreak, state security officials said.
The fighting broke out as wardens were "thwarting the inmates' attempted prison break" in the city of Gomez Palacio, the public security office in Durango state said in a statement.
Alarm bells rang out in the facility as the inmates mutinied, shooting at the guard towers and the wardens' office, it added.
In the midst of the shooting, a group of inmates tried to escape through tunnels and over a back fence. Guards initially fired in the air before returning the prisoners' fire directly.
Troops deployed to the prison eventually put a stop to the attempted jailbreak and regained control of the facility.
Mass jailbreaks have become a recurrent problem in Mexico. In September, 131 inmates escaped through the front door of a prison in Piedras Negras, a city on the US border.
In the last two years, 521 inmates have run free in 14 prison escapes while 352 homicides have been committed inside penitentiaries, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
Prisoners often smuggle in drugs, weapons and even prostitutes, and gangs fight over control of the prison economy, according to the government office.
A jailbreak at a prison in the northern state of Nuevo Leon in February saw 44 prisoners killed during fighting between two warring drug cartels.
The commission said 60 percent of Mexico's prisons are controlled by organized crime groups.
Chronic overpopulation at the jails has sharpened the struggle between criminal gangs. Some 237,580 prisoners are packed in detention centers that only have the capacity for 188,147 inmates, a 26 percent surplus.
Mexico has 419 prisons -- 13 controlled by the federal government and the rest managed by state and municipal authorities. (AFP)
