A massive fire ripped through an overcrowded prison in Burundi before dawn on Tuesday, with fears of heavy casualties as inmates were still confined to their cells at the time, witnesses said.
The blaze at the facility in the political capital Gitega broke out at about 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and destroyed several areas of the prison, they said.
One said about 20 injured people were taken to hospital.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known and as yet there has been no official comment on the incident.
“We started shouting that we were going to be burned alive when we saw the flames rising very high, but the police refused to open the doors of our quarters, saying ‘these are the orders we have received,” one detainee told AFP by phone.
“I don’t know how I escaped, but there are prisoners who were burned completely.”
The prison housed more than 1,500 inmates at the end of November, according to prison authority figures, far higher than its capacity of 400.
A massive fire ripped through an overcrowded prison in Burundi before dawn on Tuesday, with fears of heavy casualties as inmates were still confined to their cells at the time, witnesses said.
The blaze at the facility in the political capital Gitega broke out at about 4:00 am (0200 GMT) and destroyed several areas of the prison, they said.
One said about 20 injured people were taken to hospital.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known and as yet there has been no official comment on the incident.
“We started shouting that we were going to be burned alive when we saw the flames rising very high, but the police refused to open the doors of our quarters, saying ‘these are the orders we have received,” one detainee told AFP by phone.
“I don’t know how I escaped, but there are prisoners who were burned completely.”
The prison housed more than 1,500 inmates at the end of November, according to prison authority figures, far higher than its capacity of 400.
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