Prison riot kills 44 in Mexico

MONTERREY, Mexico - An inmate riot that may have been staged to cover a breakout killed 44 prisoners on Sunday, and the jail's director and all guards on duty at the time have been detained, a security official said.

Nuevo Leon state public security spokesman Jorge Domene Zambrano said the riot broke out at about 2 am in a high-security section of a state prison in the city of Apodaca outside the northern industrial city of Monterrey.

The fight between two cell blocks, each with about 750 prisoners, may have been staged as a cover for a prison break, he said. Domene said in counting the dead, officials discovered some prisoners missing, but didn't know yet how many.