The escape sparked a massive manhunt, with federal police and the Mexican army deployed on roads and highways near the correctional facility in Piedras Negras, a city bordering the Texas town of Eagle Pass.

The US Border Patrol was also taking part in the search, Coahuila state attorney general Homero Ramos Gloria told Milenio television.

The prison's director, security chief and shift guard were questioned over the escape and authorities have asked a judge to issue a detention order against the three, the state attorney general's office said in a statement.

Ramos Gloria told reporters that the escape took place at 2:15 pm local time but that it took about an hour for prison guards to notice it, according to the newspaper El Universal.

The tunnel used by the prisoners was 2.90 meters (9.5 feet) deep, 1.20 meters wide and seven meters long, and its exit hole was at the prison's northern tower, the statement said.

After emerging from the tunnel, the inmates "cut a wire fence from where, according to prison authorities, the convicts got out one by one and reached a vacant lot," it said.

The evidence gathered by prosecutors includes fragments of a BlackBerry phone, pieces of a SIM card, a pair of flip-flops, two other flip-flops, three 1.20-meter-long pieces of rope, an electric wire and a broken padlock.

The prosecutor's office said 86 of the inmates were in prison for federal crimes while the other 46 faced different charges.

The state government offered rewards of 200,000 pesos ($15,600) for information leading to the capture of each inmate.

Authorities in Coahuila said that a special police unit killed four suspects in a clash in the town of Castanos four hours after the Piedras Negras escape was reported, and that there are indications that the dead were inmates.

Several mass prison breaks have taken place in Mexico since 2010.

The biggest to date was on December 17, 2010, when 141 inmates escaped from the Nuevo Laredo prison in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.