By mid-day 41 of the 105 escape­d prison­ers have been recapt­ured as securi­ty forces locked down the state capita­lSAO PAULO: Heavily armed men blew down the front gate of a maximum security prison in northeastern Brazil early Monday and with guns blazing enabled more than 100 inmates to escape, authorities said. The prison, a maximum security facility with 680 inmates, is located in Joao Pessoa, the capital of Paraiba state. “Heavily armed men knocked down the main gate after an exchange of fire with police and penitentiary agents,” the state’s secretariat for prisons said. Brazil’s has the world’s third largest prison population, with 726,712 inmates as of June 2016, according to official statistics. The population is double the capacity of the nation’s prisons, which in 2016 was estimated to be 368,049 inmates.

Source: The Express Tribune September 10, 2018 18:00 UTC