Gang frees prisoner in armed raid

A gang of 10 men freed a prison inmate in Fresnes, east of Paris, yesterday, using rocket launchers, machine-guns, plastic explosives and false police uniforms.

The military-style operation, which sprang an Italian bank robber aged 29, is the latest in a series of raids that have shaken the French prison service. Police were hunting last night for Antonio "Nino" Ferrara, a man with Corsican connections, who fled the supposedly high-security jail.

The raiders, dressed as policemen, broke through the prison's wire fence and fired machine-guns at two watchtowers. Using a rocket launcher they blew a hole in the armoured door of a building outside the main wall. Then they set an explosives charge to blast through the wall itself.

The men went to the punishment cell where Ferrara had been taken after refusing a body search. They escaped in a fleet of cars, leaving others ablaze as a diversion. The operation took 10 minutes.

Ferrara was serving eight years for armed robbery. He made a jail escape in 1998.

The FO prison officers' union said yesterday that organised crime in France had clearly "declared an open war on prisons".