Mexico City:
At least 132 convicts escaped from a Mexican prison near the US border on Monday, fleeing through a tunnel they dug in the old carpentry workshop, the state prosecutor's office said.
Federal, state and local police, as well as the Mexican army, were deployed to roads and highways near the correctional facility in Piedras Negras, a town bordering the United States, to look for those who fled.
US authorities were told about the escape so they can take precautionary measures, the Coahuila state attorney general's office said in a statement.
The tunnel used by the prisoners was 2.90 meters (9.5 feet) deep, 1.20 meters (3.9 feet) wide and 7.0 meters (23 feet) long, the statement said. The exit was at the prison's northern tower.
After emerging from the tunnel, "they cut a wire fence from where, according to prison authorities, the convicts got out one by one and reached a vacant lot," the statement said.