A gang used rocket launchers and heavy weapons to blow open the outer doors of a French prison and free their friend in a spectacular jail break this morning, Justice Minister Mr Dominique Perben said.
A group of at least three men in police uniform attacked the prison in Fresnes, south of Paris, to free Mr Antonio Ferrara, an Italian national convicted of armed robbery who had already escaped from jail once.
The men fired repeatedly with rocket launchers at the prison doors to blow them open and at the watchtowers, causing serious damage but no injuries.
Mr Ferrara (29) - who was sentenced in January to eight years in prison for two bank hold-ups committed in 1997 - fled with his accomplices in a waiting car, which police believe had been stolen and fitted with false license plates.
Mr Perben, who rushed to the scene immediately following the incident, deplored what he called a "military-type operation", saying the culprits had used "weapons of war".
The justice minister explained to reporters that after firing at a watchtower, the men successfully entered the prison through two separate doors and blasted through the bars of Mr Ferrara's cell, allowing him to escape.
It was the third prison breakout this year in France. "What worries us is that the accomplices are not afraid to use weapons of war any more," a prison union official commented after the jail break last week in Borgo, Corsica.
Police said that Mr Ferrara had close ties to 37-year-old Mr Joseph Menconi, the man who escaped from the Borgo prison on Friday, explaining that they suspected the two fugitives of collaborating on at least one robbery.
Meanwhile, police also announced that two suspects being held at Fresnes in connection with 17 armed robberies had escaped from police custody late yesterday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where they were being questioned.