Prison Fire Kills 28 Inmates, Morocco Says

CASABLANCA, Morocco — Twenty-eight prisoners died in a fire in the Casablanca prison complex of Oukacha on Saturday, Morocco’s official news agency reported.

“Twenty-eight [Moroccan] detainees died in a fire in Oukacha prison. . . . A judiciary investigation was opened to determine the cause of the fire,” the agency quoted a Justice Ministry statement as saying. It gave no other details.

Earlier, a doctor told Reuters by telephone that the fire had started around 6 Greenwich mean time Saturday and killed more than 26 inmates.

A Reuters reporter saw several ambulances and emergency service vehicles evacuating the bodies to nearby hospitals.

The blaze started in a section of the prison’s second floor, but its cause was not immediately known, an official said.

“The 26 dead were in a cell which is supposed to hold only eight inmates. . . . They could not be rescued quickly as the emergency intervention units took nearly two hours to extinguish the fire,” a medical source said.

The source put the death toll at 32, but this could not be confirmed.

Located in the industrial area of Casablanca, the prison, one of the most modern in Africa with a 33-foot-high wall, was surrounded by police and security forces Saturday.

Authorities would not permit journalists to get close to the main gate.

An estimated 8,000 inmates are incarcerated in the prison, which was opened in 1990.