Manhunt for drug addicts after mass break-out from Vietnam centre
Vietnamese authorities are searching for 230 drug addicts after a mass escape from a rehabilitation centre.
Ho Van Loc, deputy director of labour department in the southern Dong Nai province, said the break-out on Sunday night was started by two inmates and eventually 562, including 58 women, escaped.
Security guards who were overpowered by the inmates opened the main gate of the compound to let them out.
Police have recaptured 332 of the inmates and are searching for the others, Mr Loc said.
The centre holds 1,481 inmates.
Officials have said that rehabilitation programmes in Vietnam - which combine education, communist ideology and physical labour for one to two years - have a high failure rate, with more than 90% of the addicts relapsing within five years.
There are an estimated 200,000 drug addicts in Vietnam, many of them heroin users.
