Eight deaths in jailbreak

EIGHT people died and 44 were injured yesterday during an attempted jail break in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Sud-Kivu province, police said.

The casualties occurred at the Bukavu central prison after a grenade exploded in the hands of an inmate, senior regional police official Gaston Luzembo said.

“A colonel inmate gave a grenade to a civilian inmate and told him to throw it in front of doors to create panic to facilitate the escape,” Gaston Luzembo, said. “Not being a military man, the civilian took the pin out of the grenade but kept it and it exploded in his hands.

Three prisoners escaped with the “complicity” of the head of the jail.