DAMMAM: Civil Defense firefighters yesterday put out a major blaze that gutted a prison in the Eastern Province city of Hafr Al-Baten.
Three prisoners and four jail wardens were injured in the incident.
Lt. Col. Mansour Al-Dosary, official spokesman of the Civil Defense Department in the Eastern Province, said the fire spread from a burning sponge in a cell.
He said the jail wardens were injured as a result of a stampede by prisoners who rushed out of the burning prison cell.
The injured were taken to King Khaled Hospital in Hafr Al-Baten by Red Crescent ambulances, Al-Dosary said, adding that their condition was stable.
The spokesman said the Civil Defense firefighters controlled the blaze quickly, “preventing the fire from spreading to other cells.”
He said four firefighting and rescue units took part in the operation. “We had carried out mock firefighting and rescue operations at the prison with the cooperation of the Prisons Department,” the Civil Defense spokesman said.
In May this year, seven inmates died in a prison fire in the Eastern Province city of Ahsa.
Authorities said that fire was started by rioting prisoners who set beds on fire following a dispute among some of the inmates.
There were 1,275 inmates at the prison when the fire broke out. Sixteen inmates and three jail wardens were hospitalized suffering from asphyxia. Seven of the prisoners later died in hospital.
In April 2007, a fire broke out at a prison in Madinah leaving 10 people injured.
