Iran's official news agency reports assailants blasted open a prison wall with rocket propelled grenades in western Iran, allowing two convicted murderers to escape. IRNA on Saturday quoted Governor Noorollah Arjmoandi saying that the attackers drove up in cars and fired RPGs at the main prison in Ilam province, western Iran. The semi-official Mehr news agency, however, quoted prison official Ali Reza Babaei as saying that the explosion was caused by a bomb, injuring 19 people, three of them prison guards. Mehr said the two prisoners who escaped were convicted murderers and one of them had been scheduled to be hanged. The attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a jail in southwest Iran in an apparent bid to help prisoners break out, wounding three guards and up to 16 others, media reported. Police colonel Aziz Abadi said three prisoners managed to escape from the central prison in the city of Ilam, but that one of them was later recaptured, the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported. It happened in a region bordering Iraq. “The culprits, who used getaway cars to escape from the scene of the incident, are at large now and the police are after them,” the official IRNA news agency quoted provincial Governor Nourollah Arjomandi as saying. Arjomandi said the blast was caused by a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at one of the prison's walls, but that there were no deaths, IRNA said. “The explosion caused damages to the residential units around and broke window panes within a radio of 500 meters and a number of cars were damaged,” Arjomandi said.State television said the suspected motive of the blast was to free a number of prisoners and that at least five people were wounded. They received medical care but were later allowed to leave hospital.
