A fire at the main prison in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi, which sparked rioting and an attempted jail break, has led to one inmate being shot dead and four police officers being injured.
Prison officials say the fire, which was caused by lightning, began in one of the cells before engulfing much of the jail.
“We had to open the inmates’ [cells] for their lives to be spared,” prison spokesman James Annan told reporters.
Scores of the evacuated inmates used the opportunity to attempt a break-out, but were foiled by a large deployment of police surrounding the compound. Prisoners hurled bricks, chairs and other missiles at officers and over the prison wall, Annan said. As the situation threatened to deteriorate, more officers were dispatched from the capital Accra in the south to maintain calm.
According to Annan, one inmate “attempted to snatch a weapon from one of the police officers during the chaos”, leading to another officer shooting the inmate dead. He adds that four officers were severely injured in the fracas.
“Now everything is calm… nobody managed to escape,” the spokesperson said.
According to a separate report, large vans had been deployed to transfer inmates to another facility.
