Women cry while standing outside the prison in Comayagua

REUTERS

A massive fire swept through an overcrowded prison in Honduras and killed more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

A senior official at the attorney general's office, Danelia Ferrera, said 357 people died in the blaze that began late on Tuesday night at the prison in Comayagua, about 75 km (45 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

"It's a terrible scene ... Our staff went into the cells and the bodies are charred, most of them are unrecognizable," Ferrera told Reuters, adding that officials would have to use dental records and DNA in many cases to identify those killed.

It was one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America.

"We heard screaming from the people who caught on fire," one prisoner told reporters, showing the fingers he fractured in his escape from the fire. "We had to push up the roof panels to get out."

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, and there are frequent riots and clashes between rival street gangs in its cramped prisons.

But it was not yet clear if the prison fire was started during a riot or if it was an accident.

Worried and angry relatives surrounded the prison on Wednesday morning, at one point throwing rocks at police and trying to force their way inside the prison.

Police responded by firing shots into the air and shooting tear gas at protesters, most of whom were women.

President Porfirio Lobo said he suspended the director of the Comayagua prison and the head of the national prison system to ensure a thorough investigation.

He promised to "take urgent measures to deal with this tragedy, which has plunged all Hondurans into mourning".

There was confusion over the death toll, with some reports that more than 100 inmates had escaped and could have been mistakenly counted among the dead and others that the dead and missing totalled 402 people - almost half the prison's inmates.

Lucy Marder, head of forensic services in Comayagua, said police reported that one of the dead was a woman who had stayed overnight at the prison and the rest were inmates, but she said some of the presumed dead could have escaped.

Local media reported that the Comayagua fire department chief also died in the blaze.