Cop killed as 92 inmates escape Brazil jail
HEAVILY armed men blew down the front gate of a maximum security prison in northeastern Brazil on Monday and with guns blazing enabled 92 inmates to escape while killing a policeman, authorities said.
Officials said the assault was carried out by about 20 men in four vehicles who fired on watchtowers and used explosives to destroy the front gate of the Romeu Goncalves Abrantes prison.
The prison, a maximum security facility with 680 inmates, is located in Joao Pessoa, the capital of Paraiba state.
“Heavily armed men knocked down the main gate after an exchange of fire with police and penitentiary agents,” the state’s secretariat for prisons said.
By midday, 41 of the 92 escaped prisoners had been recaptured as security forces locked down the state capital, closing schools and medical centres as a precaution.
More than a thousand police officers were mobilised to take part in the search, authorities said.
State prisons secretariat head, Colonel Sergio Fonseca de Souza, said the aim of the assault was to free three suspects arrested a year ago for an armed assault using explosives.
Brazil has the world’s third largest pr i son popu lat ion, w it h 726,712 inmates as of June 2016, according to official statistics.
The population is double the capacity of the nation’s prisons, which in 2016 was estimated to be 368,049 inmates.
“The whole of Brazil is going through this situation,” military police Colonel Euller Chaves told reporters.
Along with severe overcrowding, Brazil’s prisons are plagued by gang violence, and riots and breakout attempts are not uncommon.
The country’s two biggest gangs have been at war, with much of the violence, at times savage, carried out in prisons.
In October 2016, 18 inmates were killed after violence broke out on successive days in two separate jails in the north.