Tuesday, 06 Apr 2021 07:56 AM MYT
The attackers blasted their way into the Owerri prison in Imo state, engaging guards in a gun battle, the national corrections authority said in a statement. AFP pic
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ABUJA, April 6 More than 1,800 inmates have escaped after heavily armed men attacked a prison in southwest Nigeria using explosives, prison authorities said yesterday.
The attackers blasted their way into the Owerri prison in Imo state, engaging guards in a gun battle, the national corrections authority said in a statement.
“I can confirm that the Imo State command of the Nigerian Correctional Service was attacked by unknown gunmen in Owerri,” Imo state corrections service spokesman James Madugba told AFP, adding that the number of escaped inmates was yet to be confirmed.
THE STANDARD By
Reuters |
April 6th 2021 at 12:28:31 GMT +0300
Burnt vehicles are seen outside the Nigeria police force Imo state command headquaters after gunmen attacked and set properties ablaze in Imo State, Nigeria. [Reuters]
More than 1,800 inmates escaped from a Nigeria prison in the southeastern city of Owerri after an attack by gunmen carrying rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, explosives and rifles, the prisons authority said.
Nigerian police said it believed a banned separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), was behind the attack, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement.
The secessionist movement in the southeast is one of several serious security challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari, including a decade-long Islamist insurgency in the northeast, a spate of school kidnappings in the northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.