MEXICO CITY -- More than 130 inmates escaped through a tunnel from a Mexican prison on the border with the United States in one of the biggest jailbreaks the country's beleaguered penal system has suffered in recent years.

Homero Ramos, attorney general of the northern state of Coahuila, said 132 inmates of the Cereso prison in the city of Piedras Negras had escaped through the tunnel in an old carpentry workshop, then cut the wire surrounding the complex.

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Corrupt prison officials may have helped the inmates escape, said Jorge Luis Moran, chief of public security in Coahuila, adding that U.S. authorities had been alerted to help capture the fugitives if they try to cross the border.

Eighty-six of the escaped prisoners were serving sentences or pending trials for federal crimes, including drug trafficking, the Zocala newspaper reported. The rest faced state charges, it said.

Many challenges for incoming president
The jailbreak is a reminder of the challenges that await Enrique Pena Nieto, the incoming president, who has pledged to reduce crime in the country after six years of increased gang-related violence under President Felipe Calderon.

Many of Mexico's prisons are overcrowded and struggle to counter the influence of criminal gangs that can use their financial muscle to corrupt those in charge.

Ramos said that the state government of Coahuila was offering a reward of $15,700 for information leading to the capture of each fugitive.

Mexico's drug war: No end in sight

The Piedras Negras complex housed a total of 734 inmates, and the tunnel through which the prisoners escaped was about four feet wide, 9 1/2 feet deep and 23 feet long, Ramos said.

Piedras Negras is about 150 miles southewest of San Antonio, Texas.

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Mass breakouts
There have been numerous mass breakouts in the last few years from Mexico's penal system, and prison officials are frequently accused of complicity with drug cartels.

At the end of 2010, more than 140 inmates escaped a prison in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. This February, at least 44 people died in a fight between rival gangs at an overcrowded prison in northern Mexico.

More on this story from NBC's San Antonio affiliate WOAI.com

Pena Nieto has pledged to reform the prisons, though experts say he will struggle to make an impact unless he combines this with root-and-branch reform of the justice system.

Pena Nieto, 46, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, will take office in December. The party was widely accused of corruption during its long rule between 1929 and 2000, and he has promised to break with that checkered past.

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Gang violence
Northern Mexico has been hit particularly hard by violence stemming from brutal turf wars between drug gangs that have overshadowed Calderon's conservative administration.

Calderon has used the military to try and crack down on the gangs, and has captured or killed many of the top drug lords.

President: Mexico gang-related deaths fall by 15 percent in 2012

But his efforts have come at a price.

Gang-related violence has surged on Calderon's watch, and fighting between cartels and their clashes with security forces have claimed more than 55,000 lives over the past six years.

Last week the Mexican Navy captured one of the biggest kingpins active near the U.S.-Mexican border, the leader of the Gulf Cartel, Jorge Costilla, known as "El Coss."

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Analysts forecast this would lead to an increase in criminal activity in northern Mexico as rival gangs fought for control of lucrative smuggling routes in the area.

Reuters and WOAI.com contributed to this report.

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More than 20 people died in clashes between armed gangs at a Venezuelan prison over the weekend, a government official was quoted as saying on Monday. 

Prisons Minister Iris Varela said on state television that "more than 20" had died in the Yare I prison in the coastal state of Miranda, including family members who had been visiting when the violence broke out on Sunday, El Economista reported. (Link to story in Spanish)

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Most of the dead, however, were members of two groups that are "heavily armed inside the prison," the minister was quoted as saying.

Those behind the killings will be "made to answer" for their actions, Varela said, according to the BBC.

AFP quoted the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, a non-governmental group, as saying that more than 300 inmates have been killed in the country's prisons since the start of the year. More than 500 died in 2011, the BBC reported, citing the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

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According to government figures, 50,000 prisoners are housed in a system built for 14,000 inmates, AFP added. 

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A Norwegian prison is looking to hire people to be friends with mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, according to reports.

Ila prison hopes to find people willing to play hockey, chess and otherwise interact with Breivik, who is on trial for massacring 77 people in a bomb attack in Oslo and a shooting at a summer camp for young people on Utoeya island in July last year.

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Citing Norway's Verdens Gang, the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper reported that the "friends" would be trained experts as Breivik, 33, is feared to be too dangerous to mix with other prisoners.

"It could be anything from a team for indoor hockey to people who are willing to play chess with him," Knut Bjarkeid, director of the Ila prison said, according to the Telegraph's translation.

Man sets himself on fire outside Breivik courthouse

Bjarkeid said it was feared that Breivik might take other prisoners hostage in an attempt to escape if he was allowed near them. The killer is expected to serve at least 21 years in prison.

Under Norway's laws, prisoners cannot be kept in isolation for a long time as that is considered to be unduly cruel, the AFP news agency said.

"Many of the initiatives around Breivik are designed to prevent hostage-taking," Bjarkeid told Verdens Gang. "This makes it impossible to provide normal contact with others."

Tears as victim's brother throws shoe at Norway mass killer Anders Breivik

Bjarkeid added while Breivik appeared calm in court, he was still a threat. "He is a soldier in phase three of his own war. He still behaves exactly as he himself has described in his manifesto."

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KHARKIV, Ukraine -- Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has gone on hunger strike in prison after guards dragged her off her bed and punched her in the stomach, her lawyer said on Tuesday.

Prison authorities deny the accusations.

Tymoshenko, the main opponent of President Viktor Yanukovich, is in jail convicted of abuse of office. She said the beating took place while she was being moved to a state-run hospital last Friday after complaining of back pain. 

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"They approached my bed, put a sheet over me and started dragging me off the bed, using brute physical force. In pain and desperate, I started defending myself the way I could and received a strong fist punch in the abdomen," Tymoshenko said in a statement read to reporters by her lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko.

The 51-year-old was convicted last year in a case that strained relations between Ukraine and the West, which saw it as politically motivated.

PhotoBlog: Ukraine court jails former PM Yulia Tymoshenko for 7 years

In the statement, she said she had been attacked by three prison guards: "They twisted my arms, lifted me up and dragged me outside wrapped in a blanket. I thought those were the last minutes of my life."

The prison administration denied using any force against Tymoshenko, the Interfax news agency reported.

A state prosecutor denied allegations of beating but said Tymoshenko's move last week had indeed been forced.

"She packed up and got dressed and then lay on her bed and said 'I am not going anywhere'," Interfax quoted regional prosecutor Henady Tyurin as saying.

"The law ... allows the prison service to use physical force: (guards) lifted her, carried her to the car and took her to the hospital."

Tymoshenko returned to her prison in the city of Kharkiv on Sunday after she refused to be examined.

The opposition leader has been on a hunger strike since Friday to draw international attention to the situation in Ukraine, Vlasenko said.

Facing new trial
Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison in October, convicted of abusing her power as prime minister in brokering a 2009 gas deal with Russia.

Yanukovich's government says the deal ran against national interests and has saddled Ukraine with an exorbitant price for vital energy supplies.

Tymoshenko is now standing a new trial, charged with tax evasion and attempted embezzlement, and faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.

She refused to attend the opening hearing this month citing poor health. The next session is scheduled for April 28.

Tymoshenko has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, dismissing them as part of a campaign of repression by Yanukovich's government.

Russia expressed concern over "media reports about the worsening health" of Tymoshenko. A Foreign Ministry statement urged Ukrainian authorities to ensure her legal rights are protected and to display "humanity".

The European Union has warned Ukraine that its members will not ratify key bilateral agreements on political association and free trade while Tymoshenko remains in prison.

Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution which derailed Yanukovich's first bid for the presidency. She went on to serve twice as prime minister and lost the 2010 presidential vote to Yanukovich in a close race.

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Five Taliban detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison have agreed to be transferred to Qatar, a move Afghanistan believes will boost a nascent peace process, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman said on Saturday.

The transfer idea is part of U.S. efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table to avoid prolonged instability in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave the country at the end of 2014.

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"We are hopeful this will be a positive step towards peace efforts," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told Reuters, adding the Taliban detainees would be re-united with their families in Qatar if the transfer takes place.

It would be one of a series of good-faith measures that could set in motion the first substantial political negotiations on the conflict in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 in a U.S.-led invasion.

A year after it was unveiled, the Obama administration's peace initiative may soon offer the United States a historic opportunity to broker an end to a war that began as the response to the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on the United States.

UN: Afghan civilian deaths in war hit record high

But the peace drive also presents risks for President Barack Obama.

He faces the potential for political fallout months before a presidential election, as his government considers backing an arrangement that would give some degree of power to the Taliban, known for their brutality and extreme interpretation of Islam.

No turning back for Obama on Afghan war

Despite months of covert diplomacy, it remains unclear whether the prisoner transfer will go ahead.

Doubts are growing about whether the Taliban leadership is willing to weather possible opposition from junior and more hard-core members who appear to oppose negotiations.

Most dangerous inmates at Guantanamo
Karzai's top aide, Ibrahim Spinzada, visited the Guantanamo facility this week to secure approval from the five Taliban prisoners to be moved to Qatar.

Karzai's government has demanded the five former senior members of the Taliban government, held at Guantanamo Bay for a decade, give their consent before they are transferred to the small Gulf state where they would be under Qatar's custody.

U.S. officials hope the peace initiative will gain enough traction to enable Obama to announce the establishment of full-fledged political talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban at a NATO summit in May.

That would mark a major victory for the White House and might ease some of the anxiety created by NATO nations' plans to gradually pull out most of their troops by the end of 2014, leaving an inexperienced Afghan military and fragile government to face a still-formidable insurgency.

The Taliban detainees are seen by some U.S. officials as among the most dangerous inmates at Guantanamo.

Their possible transfer has drawn attack from U.S. politicians from both parties even before the administration formally begins a required congressional notification process.

Among the prisoners who may be sent to Qatar is Mohammed Fazl, a "high-risk" detainee alleged to be responsible for the killing of thousands of minority Shiite Muslims between 1998 and 2001.

They also include Noorullah Noori, a former senior military commander; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a former deputy intelligence minister; and Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former interior minister.

Karzai has complained the United States has repeatedly sidelined his government in a process that is supposed to be "Afghan-led" after it emerged that U.S. officials had established contacts with the Taliban in Qatar.

But his worries seem to have eased, and there are signs that the Kabul government is prepared to extend greater support to the Qatar process, even though it wants Saudi Arabia and Turkey to facilitate talks as well.

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – No one knows for sure what started the prison fire at the Comayagua prison 50 miles north of here. But everyone agrees that the hero is a convicted murderer, an inmate named Marco Antonio Bonilla.

Antonio Bonilla, who had just months left on his sentence, roamed more freely than the others and was the prison nurse. He is credited with saving hundreds of inmates on the day of the deadliest prison fire in the last century. The prison's six guards, spooked by the flames, either ran away or refused to unlock the cells -- witness accounts differ -- but Antonio Bonilla was unrelenting, even using a heavy bench to smash open a lock, according to witnesses.

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The Valentine’s Day fire started late in the day and raced through five barracks at the Comayagua prison farm, burning and suffocating screaming men trapped behind locked doors.

The reasons given for how the fire started are many: An angry inmate had threatened to torch the prison; inmates had been fighting over a mattress; an inmate had fallen asleep while smoking.   

Prisoners later said that the guard responsible for the keys threw them on the ground, while others said that Antonio Bonilla demanded them and started opening doors when the guard turned them over.

Inmate Jose Enrique Guevara said Antonio Bonilla used a bench to break open the lock on his cell block, No. 6, where the fire started. Enrique Guevara survived with burns.

There were 852 prisoners in the prison the night of the fire; on Tuesday, the total death toll had reached 360. Enrique Guevara's cell block was hit hard. Of the 105 prisoners crammed into rows of bunks four levels high, four survived.

In his weekly meeting with ministers broadcast on Channel 8, President Porfirio Lobo said he would give Antonio Bonilla a presidential pardon for his murder conviction.

"He put himself at incredible risk trying to save lives during the tragedy," Lobo said.

The United States Embassy in Honduras issued a statement saying investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms believed the fire was an accident. They found that crowding, poor safety practices and the presence of flammable materials in and around the tightly packed bunk beds caused the rapid spread of the flames.

Inmates had clothes, curtains and small electrical devices hung from their bunks. Some also had materials to light makeshift kitchen stoves, according to some of the survivors.

Honduras has experienced deadly fires in its overcrowded prisons in the past, Reuters reported.

In 2003, 68 people died inside a prison in northern Honduras when a fire broke out during a riot and investigators later found guards had killed inmates with machetes and guns on the inside. A year later, more than 100 inmates died in another prison fire in the city of San Pedro Sula.

This article includes reporting by Reuters and The Associated Press.

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MEXICO CITY -- Around 44 prisoners died in battles between rival drug cartels in a prison in northern Mexico on Sunday, with victims being beaten, stabbed and stoned to death, according to officials.

"We can't rule out the possibility that some prisoners escaped, which also could be a motive if the fight started as a distraction," Reuters quoted Jorge Domene, security spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state government, as saying.

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Inmates at the prison in Monterrey, about 140 miles from the border with Texas, include members of Mexico's Gulf cartel as well as the feared Zetas cartel.

The outburst in Apodaca prison would be the second-largest "mass homicide" in the state of Nuevo Leon's history, after an attack on a casino left 52 dead in August, according to Mexican magazine Proceso (Link in Spanish). In May, 14 inmates were killed and burned in Apodaca's psychiatric area, according to the magazine.

Authorities said clashes erupted at around 2 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET), after which a fire broke out.  Unidentified sources told Proceso that gunfire was also heard. However, Domene told Milenion magazine that no firearms were used during the violence (Link in Spanish). Officials had regained control of Apodaca by 9 a.m. (10 a.m. ET)

Mexico's 'super labs' send meth pouring across border

Corrupt prison guards may have been involved in facilitating the disturbance at the prison and authorities were holding all the prison officials for questioning, Domene said late Sunday.

In recent years there have been a number of prison breaks in Mexico, sometimes with the aid of complicit guards.

Sunday's violence was the second deadly incident at a Latin American prison within a week. Desperate overcrowding in Honduras' prisons last week led to a massive fire in a run-down jail that killed more than 350 inmates.

The prison in Monterrey is, like many in Mexico, overcrowded as a result of the five-year-old drug war President Felipe Calderon has been waging against cartels.

The prison held about 80 percent more prisoners than it was designed for, Domene said, adding many of the inmates were charged with federal crimes related to drug trafficking.

In Mexico, where prisoners held on federal drug charges are mixed with common criminals, the system is troubled by violence tied to the powerful drug cartels battling for control of smuggling routes along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Officials: Honduras prison fire kills hundreds

Collusion between guards and prisoners is also a long-standing problem. In the most notorious example, collusion led to the escape of Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, from jail in a laundry basket in 2001.

In 2010, more than 140 inmates escaped through the front gate of a prison in Tamaulipas state, helped by prison officials.

About 50,000 people have been killed in Mexico in the past five years since Calderon launched an army-backed offensive against drug gangs shortly after taking office.

Mexico leader's message to US: 'No more weapons!'

Drug violence hit Monterrey, the wealthy capital of Nuevo Leon state, when the Zetas split off from their former employers the Gulf cartel and began fighting for control of drug trafficking routes and other criminal rackets in the city.

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Msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.