Fire at Guatemala shelter kills 22 girls

Police blame arson after escape attempt from overcrowded center

A fire tore through a home for abused teenagers and children in Guatemala, killing at least 22 girls on Wednesday after some residents set mattresses ablaze following an overnight attempt to escape from the overcrowded center, police said.

A crowd of relatives, some wailing with grief, gathered outside the government- run Virgen de Asuncion home for youths aged up to 18, in San Jose Pinula, 25 kilometers southwest of the capital, Guatemala City.

Hospitals reported about 40 people being treated for burns.

The blaze started when a group of young people who had been isolated by authorities after a riot and an escape attempt at the center on Tuesday night set fire to mattresses, said Nery Ramos, head of Guatemala’s national police.

Authorities were investigating whether those who started the blaze were the ones who had tried to escape.

“What happened is extremely serious, and even more so for the fact that it could have been avoided,” Anabella Morfin, Guatemala’s solicitor general, told a news conference.

Burnt bodies partially covered in blankets were strewn across the floor of a blackened room in the home, pictures posted to Twitter by firefighters showed.

“We will fully support the institutions responsible for investigating, and we will contribute to finding the truth,” President Jimmy Morales said in a brief statement on national television Wednesday night. Morales earlier declared three days of national mourning.

Mayra Veliz, secretary general of the attorney general’s office, pledged a transparent investigation into the cause of the blaze. She said a group of disabled girls had been bused to another shelter as detectives scoured the site.

Plagued by Latin America’s worst rates of child malnutrition and street gangs that often prey on minors, Guatemala can be a traumatic place to grow up. Conditions in the Central American nation’s public institutions are often dismal with widespread overcrowding.

On Tuesday night, riot police went in to quell unrest over the home’s conditions. Dozens of residents escaped, but 54 were recaptured and isolated.

The Virgen de Asuncion home has long suffered from overcrowding, with Guatemalan media reporting that more than 500 people were crammed into the center designed to house 400.