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More than 200 detainees escaped from a prison and at least one was killed during a shooting in the Pakistani city in the south of Karachi after being temporarily far from their cells due to earthquakes, officials announced on Tuesday.
Kashif Abbasi, a senior police official, said that 216 detainees had fled the prison in the capital of the Sindh province. Among these, 78 had been taken up. No one has been condemned or faced a trial as an activist among those who fled, he said.
Akhtar Soomro / Reuters 
A prisoner was killed and three security officials injured at the shooting, but the situation was under control, said Abbasi, adding that the police were making raids to capture the remaining escapes.
Zia-Ul-Hasan Lanjar, the Minister of the Provincial Act, told journalists on the scene that the detainees had been authorized in the courtyard and that there was “panic” because of the tremors, reports the reuters news agency. The escape began just before midnight on Monday and continued in the early hours of Tuesday, he said.
The detainees were still outside the cells when a group suddenly attacked guards, seized their weapons, opened fire and fled, said officials.
The superintendent of the Malir prison, Arshad Shah, said that the detainees had fled to a neighboring residential area. According to the residents, the police then used mosque speakers to alert them to the jailbreak and ask for help to stop the escapees.
Sindh-chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, who is not linked to the prison manager, asked the escapes of television comments to return voluntarily, saying that they had only been involved in minor crimes until that time. But he said they could face accusations of terrorism if they are arrested by police for jailbreak.
Although the prisoners escaped when they were transported to court to be tried, prison breaks are not common in Pakistan, where the authorities have strengthened security since 2013, when the Pakistani Taliban released more than 200 detainees during an attack on a prison in the northwest district of Dera Ismail Khan. But the last one was one of the largest in Pakistan, said Lanjar.
Karachi experienced several mild and shallow earthquakes in 24 hours, ranging from 2.6 to 3.4 in amplitude, according to the National Seismic Superilling Center.
