Sao Paulo: Five inmates were killed in a prison riot that followed an attempted breakout at a penitentiary in northeastern Brazil, prison director Roberto Goulart said. He said an undetermined number of inmates trying to escape the facility in Alagoas turned their weapons on prison guards when they were discovered and ordered to stop.
The firefight triggered a prison riot by other inmates at the facility that lasted two hours and required the help of militarised police to put it down, Goulart said yesterday. On taking questions from reporters, the prison director could not clarify whether the dead inmates had been killed in the shootout with prison guards or by other prisoners during the riot.
Television images showed columns of smoke hovering over the prison, presumably from burning mattresses set alight by inmates. The Cadeiao penitenciary in Alagoas has a capacity for 250 inmates, but currently houses 290,Goulart said.
