Dominican prison fire kills 134

Prison guards said they tried to open the cellblock, known as Vietnam, where the fire was raging but could not because prisoners had damaged the lock, said prisons director Juan Ramon De la Cruz Martinez.

The disaster in the eastern city of Higuey, one of the deadliest in recent times in Latin American prisons, cast a grim spotlight on inmates' conditions in the Dominican Republic, where prisons are chronically overcrowded.

By mid-afternoon, some 134 bodies had been counted and about 25 injured people were tallied, said a spokeswoman for the Civil Defence department.