Mexico City, Sep 18 (EFE).- At least 132 inmates escaped from the prison in Piedras Negras, a border city in northern Mexico, using a tunnel, Coahuila state Public Safety Secretary Jorge Luis Moran said.

Coahuila officials have asked the United States for assistance in finding and capturing the inmates, who broke out of the prison on Monday, Moran said.

The warden of the Piedras Negras prison, 27 guards, a shift supervisor and a security chief were detained after the escape, Coahuila government spokesman Sergio Sisbeles told Efe.

Of the prisoners who escaped, 86 were being held on federal charges and the rest were common criminals, Sisbeles said.

The state government is offering a reward of 200,000 pesos ($15,600) for information leading to the capture of each of the prisoners, the Coahuila government spokesman said.

State officials declared an emergency at 3:25 p.m. on Monday, leading to a huge deployment of soldiers and police, the Zocalo newspaper said.

The inmates dug a tunnel to the prison's north wall, made their way into the yard and cut through a fence, investigators said.

The tunnel, which is about 30 meters (nearly 100 feet) long and about three meters (nearly 10 feet) underground, allowed the men to get under the perimeter wall.

Army troops and federal, state and municipal police officers searched for the inmates in nearby neighborhoods and roads.

Authorities also stepped up security on the international bridge that links Piedras Negras, a city of some 150,000 people, to Eagle Pass, Texas.

The tunnel was constructed near the prison's carpentry shop, Moran told Milenio television earlier in the day.

The escape occurred after morning roll call and prison officials discovered the tunnel in the afternoon, Moran said.

The Piedras Negras prison housed 734 inmates, of whom 164 were being held on federal charges, and has the capacity to hold more than 800 prisoners.

Police officers in Garcia, a city in the Monterrey metropolitan area, arrested one of the escapees, identified as Ismael Alfonso Estrada, at 9:30 p.m., a Public Safety Secretariat official in neighboring Nuevo Leon state said Monday night.

Officers arrested Estrada after they noticed him acting suspiciously and he confessed to being an escapee, the official said.

Monday's prison break was the biggest in Mexico since Dec. 17, 2010, when 141 inmates escaped from a penitentiary in Nuevo Laredo, a border city in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas. EFE