Sharjah 24 – AFP: A massive fire tore through an overcrowded prison in Burundi before dawn on Tuesday, killing dozens of inmates and seriously injuring many more, the country's vice president said.
Many prisoners were still asleep when the blaze took hold in a penitentiary in Burundi's political capital Gitega, witnesses said.
Some survived only by clambering out -- completely naked -- to safety through the roof.
Much of the facility was destroyed, with images showing piles of charred and smouldering rubble in burnt-out rooms as plumes of grey smoke rose into the sky.
Vice President Prosper Bazombanza, who visited the scene of the tragedy with several ministers, told reporters that 38 people were killed and 69 seriously hurt.
Of the dead, 26 suffered burns and 12 were asphyxiated, he said.
The blaze broke out at about 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and grim pictures posted on social media showed huge flames engulfing the prison, and bodies of men lying on the floor.
Several sources said the inmates were trapped because the wardens did not have the keys to certain parts of the prison overnight as they were held by an official who was not on the premises.
The interior ministry said on Twitter that the disaster was caused by an electrical short-circuit at the nearly century-old prison.
A police source said the emergency services were late to the scene, with the first fire truck arriving two hours after the start of the blaze before others joined.
Victims with the most serious burns were taken to hospital, some ferried in police pick-up trucks, while others with milder cases were treated at the scene, witnesses said.
The fire was later brought under control, but many parts of the site were left in charred ruins behind a stone wall showing the date of construction in 1926, when Burundi was a Belgian colony.
It was the second fire at the penitentiary in just a matter of months, after another incident in August also blamed on an electrical problem.
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