Anger mounts over Venezuela jail fire that kills 68
AFP / Katherine ORTIZA relative of a prisoner cries in front of a police station in Valencia after a deadly fire that killed 68 people
Authorities in Venezuela faced an onslaught of national and international outrage Thursday over a blaze in a police station's jail in which 68 people died, in one of the worst disasters to hit the country's desperately overcrowded detention facilities.
Two female visitors were among those who perished as fire and smoke on Wednesday engulfed cells in the police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela's third-biggest city, located in northern Carabobo state near the capital Caracas.
A prisoners' rights groups said the 66 others killed were all male detainees.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who gave the death toll amid mayhem early Thursday at the police building, said the fire was the likely cause of the deaths. He said it looked to have been started deliberately by the detainees.
Anguished relatives of those being kept there had tried to storm the station on Wednesday, during which an officer was hurt by a stone. Police responded with tear gas to disperse them.
On Thursday, the crowd was calmer but no less anxious.
"I can't get past to see if he's dead of not," wailed Maria, an elderly woman whose son was being held in the station.
Nearby, a female police officer read off a list of survivors.
"They gave me the body of my nephew yesterday, and I've been here since 6:00 am waiting for his ID card," so he can be buried, another relative, Carmen Varela, told AFP.
"He wasn't burned. He had a gunshot to his head. To me, it looks like it was a slaughter," she said, visibly angry.
"I want to see my brother," said one woman who gave her first name as Yelitza.
The police, she said, "were the ones who caused this -- it was a massacre."
The UN's human rights office in Switzerland said in a statement it was "appalled at the horrific deaths" at the station, and called for authorities to fully investigate.
- Attempted jailbreak -
Although the station's cells were designed to hold arrested suspects for up to 48 hours, many of those being kept in them were thought to be convicted prisoners unable to be accommodated in the country's overflowing penitentiaries.
AFP / Juan BARRETOPolice give information to anxious relatives of prisoners outside the Valencia jail where the deadly fire took place
An inmates' rights association called Una Ventana a la Libertad (A Window on Freedom) said the fire was started by detainees attempting a jailbreak.
"The detainees tried to grab two police officers. When that didn't work, they started a riot and decided to set fire to mattresses, thinking that the doors would then have to be opened. (But) the bars didn't open," the group's director, Carlos Nieto, told AFP.
Fire crews had to smash a hole in the wall so survivors could get out, he said, adding around 200 people were being held inside at the time.
Some prisoners "burned to death and others were asphyxiated," Nieto said.
Photos taken by Nieto's group showed the body of a man with burns and firefighters trying to put out flames.
- Dire conditions -
AFP / Anella RETAVenezuela's prison population
Venezuela's prisons suffer from dire overcrowding and a shortage of basic supplies, struggling under the deepening economic crisis that is gripping the once-wealthy oil-producing country.
Nieto's association estimates that the temporary detention cells in Venezuela's police stations are at five times their capacity.
"All the police stations in Venezuela are facing similar or worse conditions of overcrowding, lack of food and disease," he said.
The association said 65 people died last year in the holding cells due to violence, malnutrition or tuberculosis.
Two weeks ago, 58 detainees escaped holding cells on Margarita Island, a favored tourist spot, after punching a hole in their facility's wall. They were all quickly recaptured.
In August 2017, a riot left 37 dead and 14 wounded in police cells in the southern state of Amazonas, while an April 2017 clash between rival gangs left 12 dead and 11 injured in the Puente Ayala prison in the eastern city of Barcelona.
A month before that, the remains of 14 people were found in a mass grave in the General Penitentiary of Venezuela, in San Juan de Los Morros in the country's center.
Russian spy's daughter no longer critical
AFP / Vasily MAXIMOVA man walks past the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Moscow on March 29, 2018. Russia is facing a "global wave of revulsion" in response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy, Britain's Foreign Secreta
The daughter of an ex-Russian spy hit in a nerve agent attack that has chilled Russia's relations with the West is no longer critical, a hospital said Thursday, as Moscow expelled 60 US diplomats in the latest tit-for-tat move.
Yulia Skripal, 33, was "improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition", said the hospital where she and her father have been treated since the March 4 attack blamed on Moscow by Britain.
She was now "stable" with the BBC reporting that she was conscious and talking.
Her father Sergei Skripal, 66, a former Russian double agent, remains in a critical but stable condition, said the hospital in the southwestern English city of Salisbury.
The announcement came as Russia hit back at the US's earlier expulsion of 60 diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate general in Seattle.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the US ambassador had been informed of "retaliatory measures", saying that "they include the expulsion of the equivalent number of diplomats and our decision to withdraw permission for the functioning of the US consulate general in Saint Petersburg".
Lavrov added that Russia would also issue tit-for-tat responses to the other countries that have expelled diplomats in a mass show of support for Britain.
Russia was reacting to "absolutely unacceptable actions that are taken against us under very harsh pressure from the United States and Britain under the pretext of the so-called Skripal case", he said.
Washington earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate general in Seattle.
The attack on the Skripals has been met with a major response that has seen more than 150 Russian diplomats expelled from countries around the world.
Britain's earlier expulsion of Russian diplomats has been backed by the NATO defence alliance, the United States, 18 European Union nations and other countries.
British authorities have accused Russia of being behind the attack, which Moscow denies, and said a Soviet-designed nerve agent dubbed Novichok was used in the poisoning -- the first use of chemical weapons in Europe since World War II.
A court last week heard that Yulia Skripal could not communicate in any meaningful way, while her father could not communicate at all.
British counter-terror police on Wednesday said the Skripals first came into contact with a nerve agent at his Salisbury home -- with the highest concentration on the front door.
British police said around 250 counter-terrorism detectives are working on the case, which could continue for months.
Around 500 witnesses have been identified and police are looking through more than 5,000 hours of security camera footage.
- Novichok on front door -
"We believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door," Dean Haydon, Britain's counter-terror police chief, said on Wednesday.
"Traces of the nerve agent have been found at some of the other scenes detectives have been working at over the past few weeks, but at lower concentrations to that found at the home address."
Investigators had sealed off the bench where the Skripals were found, a pub and restaurant the pair visited, the grave of the former spy's wife and a children's play area near Skripal's home.
The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said the highest concentration was found on Skripal's door handle and could have been administered through a "gloopy substance which could have been smeared on".
It would explain why the nerve agent may have been found on Skripal's car or the restaurant in which they had eaten, he added.
Alastair Hay, professor emeritus of environmental toxicology at Leeds University, said little was known about the Novichok family of nerve agents.
However, in persistent agents like the better-known VX, contamination is generally through the skin and the full effects are not immediate.
"In situations like the one involving the Skripals, it is likely there would have been delayed onset of symptoms like headaches, feeling nauseous, feeling very weak and possibly vomiting, after the typical exposure occurs through skin contact," he said.
Skripal sold secrets to Britain and moved there in a 2010 spy swap. His daughter was visiting from Russia.
- Breaking point -
Moscow is facing a "global wave of revulsion" in response to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy, Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said.
"The Kremlin underestimated the strength of global feeling," Johnson said at a speech late Wednesday in London.
While the Skripals remain in hospital, a police officer who responded to the attack was discharged last week.
International experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Salisbury on March 20 to verify Britain's findings.
Meanwhile more than £880 million ($1.25 billion, one billion euros) of British property claimed to have been bought by Russians with suspect money is to be investigated by a parliamentary inquiry.
The Treasury Select Committee said it will probe the scale of economic crime in Britain following claims the country -- in particular the London property market -- has become the "destination of choice" to launder money.
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