A prison brawl left 14 inmates dead on Friday in an area of northern Mexico that has been overrun by violence in the country's spiraling drug war, Reuters quoted a state police spokesman as saying. The early morning brawl broke out between two groups of prisoners in a jail in the city of Matamoros in northern Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas, spokesman Hector Walle told Reuters. The prisoners used homemade weapons and blades to attack one another. Many of Mexico's jails are packed with prisoners linked to the country's thriving drug trade. Around 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon sent thousands of federal police and soldiers to crack down on powerful drug cartels after he took office in late 2006. A deeply flawed prison system is seen as exacerbating Mexico's cycle of violence. Last month, prosecutors said prison officials at one jail in Durango state permitted inmates to leave the jail at night to carry out revenge killings -- using weapons borrowed from guards -- against rival drug cartels. Tamaulipas, near the U.S. border, has been hit by some of the worst drug violence in Mexico as rival trafficking organizations battle for control U.S.-bound smuggling routes. On Thursday evening, a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the Tamaulipas state capital Ciudad Victoria, but no one was injured in the blast.
