COMAYAGUA, Honduras – A fire started by an inmate tore through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. Officials confirmed 358 dead Wednesday, making it the world’s deadliest prison fire in a century.

The local governor, who was once a prison employee, told reporters that an inmate called her moments before the blaze broke out and screamed: “I will set this place on fire, and we are all going to die!”

Comayagua Gov. Paola Castro said she called the Red Cross and fire brigade immediately after receiving the call late Tuesday night. But firefighters said they were kept outside for half an hour by guards who fired their guns in the air, thinking they had a riot or a breakout on their hands.

Officials have long had little control over conditions inside many Honduran prisons, where inmates have largely unfettered access to cellphones and other contraband.

Survivors told investigators the unidentified inmate set fire to his bedding in the farm prison in the central town of Comayagua, 53 miles north of Tegucigalpa. The lockup housed people convicted of serious crimes such as homicide and armed robbery, but also those who had yet to be tried.

The blaze spread within minutes, killing inmates in their locked barracks.

“We couldn’t get them out because we didn’t have the keys and couldn’t find the guards who had them,” Comayagua fire department spokesman Josue Garcia said.

With 856 prisoners packed into barracks, the prison was at double capacity, said Supreme Court Justice Richard Ordonez, who is leading the investigation. There were only 12 guards on duty when the fire broke out, state prosecutor German Enamorado said.

Ordonez said the fire started in a barracks where 105 prisoners were bunked, and only four of them survived. About 115 bodies had been sent Wednesday to the morgue in Tegucigalpa.

Other prisoners were set free by guards but died from the flames or smoke as they tried to flee into the fields surrounding the facility, where prisoners grew corn and beans on a state-run farm.

Survivors told grim tales of climbing walls to break the sheet-metal roofing and escape, only to see prisoners in other cellblocks being burned alive.

“I only saw flames, and when we got out, they were being burned, up against the bars, they were stuck to them,” said Eladio Chicas, 40, who was in his 15th year of a 39-year sentence. “It was something horrible,” he said as he was led away by police, handcuffed, to testify before a local court about what he saw. “This is a nightmare.”

Ordonez said the inmates’ bodies were found piled up in the prison’s bathrooms, where they apparently fled to turn on the showers and hope the water would save them from the blistering flames.

Instead, their bodies were found stacked like cordwood, burnt to cinders.

Prisoners perished clutching each other in bathtubs and curled up in laundry sinks.

Ordonez said others were found stuck to the metal roofing, their burned bodies fused to the metal.

“We were awoken by the flames and screams,” said homicide suspect Selbim Adonay, 18, one of the prison’s many inmates awaiting trial. He wore a dust mask and handcuffs, his jeans torn. “We couldn’t do anything because we were locked up.”

Comayagua was built in the 1940s for 400 inmates.

Unlike U.S. prisons, where locks can be released automatically in an emergency, Honduran prisons are infamous for being old, overcrowded hotbeds of conflict and crime.

National prison system director Danilo Orellana defended the guards’ decision to keep firefighters out as flames lit up the night sky.

“The guards first thought they had a prison break, so they followed the law saying no one could enter to prevent unnecessary deaths,” he said.