Six inmates killed in Mexican prison riot

Six inmates were killed and 10 others were injured after authorities called in special agents to put down a riot at a prison along the US-Mexico border yesterday, authorities said.

The riot erupted shortly after dawn at the 1,942-inmate Cereso Nogales II prison in the Mexican city of Nogales, just across the border from its smaller twin city Nogales, Arizona.

As officials conducted roll-call in the prison’s solitary confinement wing, ‘‘a small collection’’ of inmates used knives made from kitchen utensils to overpower four guards, said Leopoldo Guzman, a spokesman for the government of northern Sonora state.

As prison authorities rushed to the isolated wing, the inmates who began the uprising opened the cells of more than 120 other prisoners who used knifes and clubs made from bed posts and sink pipes to beat back guards, Guzman said.

Officials tried to negotiate the release of the captured guards, then called in special state police agents who stormed the prison and fought through barricades of furniture and debris erected around the solitary confinement wing by the rioting inmates, Sonora’s Interior Minister, Oscar Lopez said.

After a five-hour standoff, agents were able to regain control of the prison without firing their guns, the statement said. The official report denied the accounts of local television and newspaper reporters who said they heard shots upon arriving outside the prison.

In a press conference late yesterday, Lopez said six inmates were killed after being stabbed by fellow prisoners wielding homemade knives. Another 10 prisoners were injured in fighting between rioting inmates, he said.

‘‘Not one inmate was injured by agents of the state police,’’ Lopez said, adding that no prison official was seriously injured in the riot.

But Mexican television reports put the number killed in the riot as high as 10 and said that as many as 50 other inmates and guards may have been injured.

Cereso Nogales was locked-down on Tuesday night and prison officials could not be reached for comment. Guzman said he could not explain the conflicting reports.

As news of the riot spread, inmates’ family members gathered outside the prison’s high metal gates and pelted police surrounding the compound with rocks and sticks. The police responded by firing tear gas, eventually forcing the crowd to disperse, Lopez said.

There were no reported injuries during the demonstrations outside the prison.