Indonesian forces backed by water cannons and armored vehicles were locked in a tense stand-off outside a prison on Bali island Thursday after rioting inmates took control for a second night.
Ousted prison guards and some 400 heavily armed police and military spent the night massed outside the notorious Kerobokan prison, which holds more than 1,000 inmates, including 12 Australian drug mules.
Security forces had stormed the overcrowded prison at dawn on Wednesday to wrest control after a night of arson and stone-throwing, only to lose it again late that night.
“The prisoners took over the prison again, which forced security personnel to fire warning shots into the air,” provincial military command spokesman Wing Handoko told AFP.
With the prison sealed off by the inmates, it was not clear if there were any casualties inside.
Handoko said that authorities would attempt to evacuate all foreign and female prisoners from the complex, but did not say how such an operation would be carried out.
“We are trying to find the right moment to try and evacuate foreigners and female prisoners,” he said. “We don‘t want to take chances, just in case the foreigners become a target of the prisoners’ anger.”
Sixty foreigners are held at the jail, including 14 women, said Anang Khuzairi, head of security at Kerobokan. The jail is home to 1,015 inmates -- among them 125 women -- more than three times its intended capacity.
Handoko said security forces had been releasing occasional volleys of aerial gunshots through the night to reinforce their presence to prisoners, and to deter any from escaping.
Police and military personnel threw a security cordon around the jail, guarding all access points to the facility which is located in a suburban area of Bali just seven kilometers from the tourism hub of Kuta beach.
In the early hours of Thursday morning an AFP reporter heard three minutes of continuous gunfire unleashed by security forces.
Shortly after, a flaming torch made of rags wrapped around a pole was flung from inside the prison and landed near a television broadcaster‘s vehicle, but was extinguished before the fire could spread.
Shouting and the rattling of the prison’s inner gates had been heard before police opened fire, but after the volley silence descended on the jail, broken by police occasionally firing into the air.
As dawn broke over a prison that has been without electricity since the trouble first broke out, police again moved armored vehicles and water cannons outside the jail walls.
The first riots were a distance away from the wings where the Australian prisoners are kept, but it was not clear whether the second night of trouble was any closer to quarters housing foreign inmates.
All 12 Australian prisoners at Kerobokan, including two on death row and six serving life sentences, were safe after the first night‘s trouble, Australia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
Among the Australians at the jail are convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby and a group known as the “Bali Nine”, who were caught attempting to smuggle drugs from Bali.
There have been a number of riots at the jail in recent years, including one triggered by a police drug raid in June.
It is one of Indonesia‘s most notorious prisons, with a combustible mix of inmates including convicted murderers, sex offenders and others guilty of violent crimes. (AFP)
