The Ebonyi State Police Command this morning, foiled an attempted jail break as Abakaliki prison inmates staged a riot inside the prison.
As at press time, Police had cordoned off all roads leading to the Abakaliki prisons.
Gunshots could be heard intermittently as the police tried to recover a firearm allegedly taken from one of the prison officers.
It was gathered that the inmates were protesting poor treatment especially inadequate feeding.
Unconfirmed reports said that some losses of lives had been recorded in the incident.
Another source said some of the inmates capitalised on the riot to stage a jail break and had already succeeded in creating an opening on the wall before anti-riot policemen arrived and heavily tear gassed them into submission.
The prison is located beside the police headquarters, leading to prompt intervention from the police.
Already the commander of military cantonment and the commissioner of police have visited the area and are directing the operations to restore sanity to the prison.
The police spokesman, George Okafor, when contacted, said the command was still working hard to resolve the crisis.
He, however, refused to confirm if anybody was dead or not.
“There was an attempted jail break and the prisons called in the police. We cordoned off the area and restored normalcy to the area.”
“We will brief you later on the issue once everything has been sorted out”.
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