More than 50 dead in Tunisia prison fire, escape bid

Tunis: A fire at a prison Saturday in Monastir in eastern Tunisia killed more than 50 inmates, medical sources and eyewitnesses said.

“Thirty-one bodies were taken to the morgue and more have followed,” Dr Ali Chatli, head of the forensic medicine department at Fatouma Bourguiba hospital at Monastir, 160km south of Tunis, told AFP.

Medical sources told the German Press Agency DPA that the number of dead was around 50 in the prison inferno. The blaze apparently started when prison inmates began setting their mattresses on fire, with the flames quickly spreading through the facility.

Then, according to eyewitness accounts, prisoners seeking to escape were shot dead by prison guards, claiming several lives.

Further details were not immediately available. The prison fire was one of the latest cases of arson in Tunisia's plunge into chaos in the wake of the dramatic departure Friday of long-time president Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali following a month of street protests.