The
North Sumatra police said 200 prisoners had managed to flee
incarceration at Tanjung Gusta Prison in Medan due to a fire that devastated the
facility on Thursday night.
The fire
was allegedly started by inmates around 7 p.m., who were angered by an
outage of water and electricity at the prison.
Hundreds
of police officers, helped by local residents, guarded the surrounding
area to catch the escaping inmates.
National Police
spokesperson Insp. Gen. Ronny F. Sompie said the police had deployed
personnel from the North Sumatera Police, the Medan Police and local
police precincts to secure the scene.
“We
are focusing on capturing the inmates. The North Sumatera Police’s Mobile
Brigade [Brimob], Sabhara rapid response unit, crime and intelligence
unit are now at the
location,”
he said.
Ronny said that to date 12
terrorist convicts had been detained but gave no further details.
North Sumatra police chief
Insp. Gen. Syarief Gunawan said the police had managed to arrest 10 inmates
— one was a terrorist convict, as quoted by tribunnews.com.(hrl/dic)
