Battering ram used in mass jailbreak

Georgian police were last night trying to catch nearly 100 convicts still on the run after one of the largest prison breaks in history.

The crippled former Soviet state was reeling with embarrassment at the boldness of the jailbreak, in which 129 armed convicts fled in minibuses after overpowering prison guards and flattening the jail walls with dynamite and a battering ram.

The authorities have so far caught only 38 of the high-security prisoners who escaped on Wednesday. Two reached the country's border areas by yesterday afternoon, and were detained by Russian soldiers near the village of Kumisi in eastern Georgia.

The escape has drawn attention to the crumbling nature of the Georgian state. Twelve guards were responsible for 1,000 of the country's most dangerous criminals at the Second Maximum Security Colony in the town of Rustavi, and were powerless to resist the escape.

President Eduard Shevardnadze ordered the national security council to investigate the role of Georgian officials in the escape, and to find ways of bringing the prison system "back to normal".

His spokesman, Kakha Imnadze, said: "It is unacceptable for prisoners while they are in jail to have not only mobile phones and drugs, but guns too."

The hunt descended into farce yesterday when the ministry of the interior presented a curiously relaxed ultimatum: return to jail before Monday or face longer jail sentences. "The police have been ordered to shoot the escapers if they resist detention," a spokesman said.

The jailbreak began when two minibuses pulled up outside the prison, 25 miles south-east of the capital, Tbilisi. Two masked men opened fire on prison guards, witnesses said, killing one and injuring two.

Interior ministry officials insisted the attack began inside the jail, with prisoners overpowering their guards.

A huge explosion ripped a hole in the prison walls, which was then enlarged using tree trunks as battering rams. The escapers fled in the minibuses. Many roads in Georgia were closed yesterday and cabinet ministers flocked to Rustavi, eager to show they were personally engaged in tackling the jailbreak.

In July the head of Georgia's prison service, Gigla Agulashvili, and his three deputies resigned after 12 convicts tunnelled their way out of the same prison, the sixth jailbreak in the country in as many weeks.