Fire Sweeps Through Moroccan Prison

A fire raged through an overcrowded Moroccan prison early Friday as inmates slept, prompting a frantic attempt to flee the inferno that killed at least 49 people and injured some 90 others, including two guards, authorities said.

Many inmates died of smoke inhalation, while others were trampled in a chaotic search for safety during the blaze, which was believed to be the worse fire ever at a Moroccan prison.

Hundreds of people, including anguished relatives of inmates, gathered outside Sidi Moussa prison, on the northern coast of Morocco, waiting for authorities to release names of the dead.

"I was supposed to see my husband, Karim, today," said a woman in tears, who only gave her first name, Fathia. "I have no news of him and don't know where to find the victims' list."

Police and soldiers erected barricades to keep the crowds away from the walls of the prison, which is located about 112 miles south of the capital, Rabat.

The cause of the fire, which started around 1:30 a.m., was not immediately known, said the Moroccan news agency MAP, citing sources it did not identify.

Officials were initially quoted as saying the fire may have been caused by an electrical problem. However, Deputy Interior Minister Fouad Ali Al Himma told The Associated Press that the cause was still unknown

The nature of the fire, which was limited to one of the prison's four buildings but spewed smoke through the adjoining blocks, led authorities to fear the death toll would climb, Al Himma said.

"With the large number of inmates killed by asphyxiation, we fear the toll is going to increase," he said.

The injured were taken to the regional Mohammed V Hospital, and the most seriously hurt, including eight who were in a "comatose state," were being transferred to a burn unit at a hospital in Casablanca, about 56 miles away, the news agency said.

The deaths sparked immediate debate on the overcrowding at Moroccan prisons. The North African nation has some 30 prisons and detention centers built to hold 40,000 inmates but filled with an estimated 57,000, according to a recent report by the Moroccan Observatory on Prisons.

Abderrahim Jamai, president of the observatory, called it "a humanitarian scandal without precedent" in the country's prison system.

"It's not only the overpopulation of prisons, it's also the inhuman behavior of the administration and the permanent violation" of international regulations on the detention of prisoners, he said.

The most fatal prison fire in recent years occurred in 1997 at the Oukacha prison in Casablanca. It claimed 28 lives, Jamai said.

The Sidi Moussa prison in the coastal city of El Jadida was built in 1994 to hold 1,000 prisoners but actually houses 1,313, penitentiary officials said.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. Outgoing Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi and other Moroccan Cabinet ministers were traveling to the site to head an inquiry into the fire and to organize assistance to victims' families.