141 Prisoners Escape Mexico Border Jail
(CBS/AP) Updated 10:36 ET
141 Mexican prisoners escaped early Friday morning from a jail in Nuevo Laredo near the U.S. border, reports local TV station KGBT-TV. Nuevo Laredo is the sister city of Laredo, Tx.
The prisoners allegedly just walked out the front door, reports Agence France Presse.
After the escape, the prison's 44 security guards and its director were arrested, KGBT-TV reports.
Eighty-three of the prisoners were being held for trial or had been convicted of crimes like theft, assault and other state offenses, while 58 were being held on federal charges, which include weapons possession and drug trafficking.
It was one of the biggest prison escapes in recent years, surpassing the 85 inmates who broke out of a prison in the northern border city of Reynosa in September, AFP reports.
Between January and September, an estimated 200 prisoners have escaped from prisons in Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is located, according to the state public security officials.
This is just the latest breach of Mexico's notoriously insecure jails that are helping to feed a violent drug war, Reuters reports.
The prisoners slowly filed out the main entrance of the prison on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo in the early hours of Friday, two police sources told Reuters.
"They left by the front door, which points to complicity of the prison guards," said a police source who declined to be named for security reasons.
Authorities discovered in July that prison officials had allowed convicts out of jail in northwestern Durango state to carry out revenge attacks before returning to cells for the night.
Mexico's prison system is struggling to cope with an influx of violent offenders arrested in the government's campaign against the cartels.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who sent thousands of troops across the country to fight drug gangs, has vowed to clean up prisons that in the past have allowed drug lords to live in luxury or escape when they please, Reuters reports. The conservative leader has struggled to contain corruption and lawlessness in the prison system.
The campaign against the cartels has produced a spate of violence, with 12,500 people killed in drug-related incidents the first eleven months of this year alone. There have been 30,000 deaths since 2006.