Dozens of people were killed and injured after a fire started in an immigration detention facility in northern Mexico near the US border.

The blaze – one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country – occurred late Monday at a facility in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Images from the scene showed ambulances, firefighters and vans from the morgue around the smoke-covered facility with rows of bodies lying under shimmery silver sheets.

At least 39 people died in the fire. Twenty-nine injured people were taken to hospitals, said Mexico’s National Immigration Institute in a statement. The facility was holding 68 adult men from Central and South America, it said.

Mexico’s attorney general’s office launched an inquiry and has investigators at the scene, according to media reports.

Vinagly, a Venezuelan woman, stood outside the immigration centre, desperate for information about her 27-year-old husband detained there.