A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison near Indonesia’s capital early on Wednesday, killing at least 41 inmates, two of them foreigners serving drug sentences, and injuring 80 others.
Firefighters battled through the early morning hours to extinguish the flames as black smoke billowed from the compound of the Tangerang prison on the outskirts of Jakarta.
After the blaze was extinguished, ambulance after ambulance filled with body bags containing the victims were driven by Red Cross workers to the morgue of a local hospital, where they were stacked wall-to-wall on the floor of a room awaiting transport to a larger facility for identification.
Relatives of prisoners trickled into the prison throughout the day to check and see whether their loved ones were among those killed.—AFP
