Jul 5, 2011
\nTunisian prison on fire, inmates escape: Witnesses<\/p>\n
TUNIS – AT LEAST one person died on Tuesday when fire broke out at a Tunisian prison and inmates escaped in an incident that highlights the country’s lawlessness six months after the president was ousted.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said ambulances rushed to the prison in Gassrine, about 300km south-west of Tunis, to take dozens of injured people to the local hospital.<\/p>\n
‘Hundreds of locals have gathered to learn the fate of the prisoners,’ a local resident named Majed told Reuters by telephone. ‘We see ambulances transporting the injured, they seems to be dead.’ A second witness confirmed the account. A medical source told Reuters that one person died.<\/p>\n
There has been a spate of prison fires in Tunisia over the past few months. Often the fires are started deliberately by inmates who then, in the confusion, stage mass breakouts.<\/p>\n
Tunisia electrified the Arab world in January when protests forced President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to leave the country.<\/p>\n
Tunisia’s revolution inspired uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. — REUTERS …source<\/a><\/p>\n