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Tonight, 3 prison guards are recovering from injuries they suffered while trying to suppress a mini-prison riot that broke out this afternoon before midday. 

Reports to 7News are that it happened at around 11:00 in the recreation area of the Tango 11 building when 10 prisoners were expected to comply with the end of their recreation time. 

But, the inmates, who are rumored to be affiliates of one of the Belize City gangs, allegedly refused to comply with the directives of the prison guards, and several inmates jumped one of them and held him hostage.

We are told that they are dissatisfied with the arrangements that were recently made for their prison cells, and that this dissatisfaction triggered the bold action.

But, within 20 minutes - minutes that we are told were very violent - the Prison administration brought the situation under control without any further incident. We spoke with the Prison CEO about the incident this evening, via telephone:

Virgilio Murillo - CEO, Kolbe Foundation
"We did have a little unrest, if you want to call it a little mini riot then I guess we can get away with that. It was staged by roughly 10 prisoners and this happened at about 11:05 AM and it took place in the tango 11 recreation hall. They had just come off recreation and were being put back into their cells when 10 of the guys decided to mutiny, they decided to get rebellious with the prison administration by holding one of the guards hostage and then the other 2 guards tried to intervene and then they were subsequently attacked by the other ones. So that is what really transpired. Of course we responded in quick order and in 10 minutes time, we had the matter under control. I guess the rioting based on the information I am receiving now, it would be that they were not too happy - obviously they are not too happy being in prison and you know prisons on a whole are restrictive and everything that goes on in a prison it has to do with rules and regulations and of course with restrictions, you can't really have all the amenities you have in society when you're in prison. So I think that is ideally their gripe but like I tell you there was one leader as far as the information is going and he may have cohered the other 9 to side with him and ride with him on his claim and the result was that now we had to bring it under control which we did rather fast in 10 minutes like I told you, we had it under control. We did what we had to do as a prison to assert ourselves and make sure they understand that fully well riots will not be tolerated."

The CEO stressed that there were inmates who did not have anything to do with the riot, and as soon as they saw what was happening, they started offering assistance to the prison guards, in an effort to restore law and order.

Reports from inside the prison say that friction between ethnic groups - and guards of different ethnic groups - may have led to the hostilities.