LIBREVILLE: Thirty-two convicts described by police as highly dangerous, were at large Friday in eastern Gabon after breaking out of jail, a police officer said Friday.
"Forty-eight inmates escaped on Wednesday afternoon from the prison at Franceville... We have already recaptured 16 and we are pursuing the search," Captain Serge-Wilfried Tsana, police chief for the Haut-Ogooue region, told AFP.
"Those who escaped were prisoners serving heavy sentences. They are very dangerous," Tsana added.
The police chief said the fugitives were able to escape "with the complicity of certain warders" and that some of them had headed into the Boumango district adjoining the Republic of Congo, with the aim of crossing the border.