3 Wounded in Gun Battle at Tijuana Prison

TIJUANA — A gun battle in the Baja California state penitentiary left three people wounded Monday evening, and police were negotiating with inmates who barricaded themselves in a cellblock after attacking and disarming a guard.

At least 100 city and state police officers rushed to reinforce guards at the violent, heavily overcrowded prison, which periodically experiences gunfights between inmate gangs. The police came under automatic-weapons fire from snipers in several parts of the 2,400-inmate facility, witnesses said.

About 9 p.m., authorities reported that negotiations with the rebellious group of at least six inmates were progressing and that the group had agreed to surrender. Mother Antonia, a nun who lives in the prison and is renowned for her charitable work there, apparently played a central role in those talks.

She told a television interviewer that she walked among the inmates restoring order. “They are not violent . . . with me. I talked with many of them, cell by cell, to see what they felt and how we could resolve their problems.”

Although reports were sketchy, the incident apparently began in a maximum security section of the prison shortly after 5 p.m. as guards were conducting a daily count of the prison population. A group of inmates on one of the upper floors of a cellblock suddenly wrestled away a guard’s weapon.

The ensuing brawl and exchange of gunfire left two inmates seriously wounded. A guard suffered minor injuries from a beating.

A prison official told reporters that initial accounts indicated that the mutinous inmates may have been trying to gain the release of a fellow inmate from a punitive confinement area.