Fire at crowded Guatemala children’s shelter kills at least 20

waited outside the walled facility for news of their children. Shelter personnel gave them pieces of paper to write down their children’s names so they could try to locate them.

The head of Guatemala’s social welfare agency, Carlos Rodas, said youths at the shelter started rioting Tuesday in an effort to escape. Complaints about abuse and living conditions at the overcrowded shelter have been frequent.

Then on Wednesday, about 9 a.m., “Some of the adolescents lit their mattresses on fire,” Rodas said. “We don’t shirk responsibility, we accept it, but we can’t get those lives back.”

Julia Barrera, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said late in the day that at least 20 children and teenagers perished. Two hospitals said they received 41 injured girls between the ages of 13 and 17, many with second- and third-degree burns.

Rodas said the shelter had an official capacity of 500 but was housing at least 800 youths.

A 15-year-old girl being treated for minor injuries at Roosevelt Hospital said the uprising followed rumors of an escape attempt. Some boys, or even young men who were still housed at the center after turning 18, entered the girls’ area, she said. She said she fled to her dormitory’s roof with others fearing the boys would attack them.

The government-run shelter, known as the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home, is in a rural area outside the capital. The campus is surrounded by trees and a 30-foot wall. It houses at-risk children who were victims of abuse as well as youths who completed sentences at youth detention centers and had nowhere else to go.