RIYADH, 16 September 2003 — Sixty-seven inmates died and 23 others, including three security officers, were injured in a massive fire in a prison here yesterday.
Interior Minister Prince Naif has ordered an investigation into the tragedy, which took place at Al-Hair Reformatory, about 30 km south of the capital.
Maj. Gen. Ali Al-Harithy, director general of prisons, told a reporter at the scene that a sponge mattress caught fire in a cell housing 20 inmates in Wing 19 of the facility, setting off the blaze.
“A total of 67 inmates died and 20 inmates and three security men were injured in the fire,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted the prison chief as saying. The deaths resulted from suffocation and burns.
The fire, which broke out at 11.30 a.m., was doused by evening.
The stricken wing accommodates around 100 inmates. Anguished relatives of inmates were seen waiting outside the jail for news of their loved ones.
Security forces put up roadblocks as far away as a kilometer from the prison to prevent people, especially the inmates’ relatives, from hampering the rescue work. They also banned reporters from entering the area.
Al-Harithy said a committee set up by Prince Naif was investigating the cause of the fire. The panel did not immediately make any official statement on the cause of the accident.
The official Saudi Press Agency said firemen and rescuers rushed to the scene soon after the fire broke out. Three civil defense helicopters and the Saudi Red Crescent Society took part in the rescue operation.
The injured were taken to the Security Forces Hospital, Al-Iman Hospital and the Riyadh Medical Center.
The health affairs department in the Riyadh region sent 15 medical teams, including doctors and nurses, to treat the fire victims. Thirty-eight ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals.
Maj. Gen. Harithy and Maj. Gen. Saad Al-Tuwaijery, director general of the civil defense department, supervised the fire-fighting and rescue operations.
The prison chief’s statement did not give any clue to whether the blaze was the result of an accident or had been deliberately started by inmates or people from outside the jail.
“It is too early to tell whether the fire is an act of sabotage but an investigation is going on,” a Saudi security source said.
Al-Hair is the largest reformatory in the Riyadh region, which houses some 14 others.
Riyadh was the scene of triple suicide attacks against residential compounds on May 12 that left 35 people, including nine bombers, dead.
Authorities have since launched a massive crackdown on suspected terrorists and arrested nearly 200 militants and seized several caches of weapons and explosives.
In March last year, 15 schoolgirls died and at least 50 were injured in a stampede after a fire broke out at their secondary school in Makkah.
The disaster caused an uproar in the Kingdom with parents blaming the Education Ministry for inadequate safety procedures and overcrowding.
Newspapers said that all the casualties occurred in the rush to get out of the three-story building, some girls throwing themselves out of windows while others were trampled to death on the stairs.
Yesterday’s was the largest prison fire in the Kingdom’s history. Fire accidents are common in the country. A study published by the Okaz daily said 25,652 accidents were reported to the Civil Defense in various parts of the Kingdom in 1999. The largest number of fire accidents at 245 were reported in the Riyadh region.
This is not the first time inmates were killed in prison fires in the world. In May last year a fire at the Sarkadej Prison in Algeria killed 18 prisoners and injured 11 others.
