Dozens of inmates escape Pakistani jail after earthquakes says official

ISLAMABAD - Over 200 prisoners escaped in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi late on June 2 after they were permitted to leave their cells following a series of earthquake tremors, local officials and police said.

Hundreds of prisoners were allowed into the courtyard of the jail due to the tremors, provincial law minister Zia-ul-Hasan Lanjar told reporters outside Malir prison.

“There was panic here because of earthquake tremors,” he said, adding that it was hard to control a throng of up to 1,000 people.

The jailbreak began just before midnight on June 2 and carried on till the early hours of June 3, he said.

Police said the prisoners snatched guns from prison staff, leading to a shootout, and then forced open the main gate.

On June 3, a Reuters reporter at the site saw shattered glass and damaged electronic equipment inside the jail. A meeting room, for prisoners to see their families, had been ransacked. Anxious family members gathered outside the jail on June 3.

It was one of the largest jailbreaks ever in Pakistan, Mr Lanjar said. The prison in the Malir district of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, is in a poor residential and industrial neighbourhood.

Prisoners ran through the area through the night, some barefoot, chased by police, with police managing to round some up into police vans, local TV footage showed.

Provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon said that most of the inmates had been involved in small-time crimes like drug addiction.

At least one prisoner was killed in the shooting, which also wounded three prison staff, he said.

Mr Murad Ali Shah, the provincial chief minister, said that around 80 prisoners had so far been caught, adding that it was a mistake for the prison authorities to have allowed the inmates out of their