Detention centre refugees escape as protesters riot

About 20 asylum-seekers, including a child, escaped from a detention centre in the Australian Outback today as hundreds of protesters clashed with mounted riot police outside.

Some of the refugees appeared to be bleeding after about a dozen of them scrambled over razor wire fences around the Woomera Detention Centre in central Australia.

Protesters immediately put new clothes on the refugees and whisked them away from police, who then began scuffling with rioters outside the camp.

Ten mounted officers rode into the crowd in an attempt to quell the escalating violence. But as they did so, about eight more refugees broke out, some of them escaping through holes in the fences.

The riot came at the end of a day of protest outside the camp, which has often been the scene of hunger strikes by refugees held inside under Australia’s policy of detaining all asylum-seekers who arrive in the country illegally.

Hundreds of people travelled from all over Australia to protest over the so-called mandatory detention policy.

One woman detained at the centre dashed through a hole in a fence with both arms raised yelling ‘‘Freedom! Freedom!’’

She was immediately tackled by a security guard, but protesters wrestled her free and she ran off.

Another refugee ran out shouting: ‘‘After two years I’m free!’’

Shortly after the break-out, the violence subsided and protesters drifted away from the camp.

Inside the camp, which holds about 300 refugees, mainly Afghans and Iraqis, other asylum-seekers waved shirts and chanted ‘‘Visa, visa, visa!’’

The immigration department had no immediate comment on the riot.