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| - Prisoners in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown attempted to break out of jail on Wednesday, the government said, with one guard killed and the prison set ablaze in the ensuing riot. Details about the cause of the violence were sketchy, but it followed the recent confirmation of a coronavirus case in the jail. A spokesman for the colonial-era Pademba Road Prison, Cecil Cole Showers, told AFP that a fire broke out in the penitentiary early on Wednesday morning. He said a guard was killed in the unrest, while several other guards and inmates were injured. Later on Wednesday, the government released a statement referring to the unrest as an "attempted prison break". The "government strongly condemns this attempt to destabilise the security of the state", the statement said, adding that an investigation had been launched. On Monday, the government said that a recently arrived inmate had fallen ill with coronavirus. The West African state has recorded 116 cases to date, with four fatalities. As with other poor countries in the region with fragile health care systems, there are fears that Sierra Leone is ill-equipped to handle a large outbreak. The former British colony's prisons are chronically overcrowded and unsanitary. Colonial authorities built Pademba Road Prison in 1914 with a capacity for some 300 inmates and the jail now houses over 1,000. Local NGOs had earlier raised concerns about overcrowding and urged the government to release prisoners with minor convictions to ease the risk of infection. In the statement on Monday, the government said that it was suspending criminal courts for a month, to stem prison contamination. sb/eml/har
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