Saudi jail blaze kills inmates

Fire swept through the prison despite firefighters' efforts

A fire has swept through Saudi Arabia's biggest prison, killing and injuring scores of inmates, prison officials say.

At least 67 prisoners have been killed and another 20 inmates and three guards injured, the director-general of the prison service has said.

The cause of the blaze - which broke out around midday (0900 GMT) at the Al-Hair prison, south of the capital Riyadh - is unknown.

Firefighters and rescue workers are said to have "intervened immediately", but the fire continued to burn for several hours.

Relatives of inmates are reported to have converged on the prison area to try to find out the fate of their loved ones.

Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz has ordered an inquiry into the cause of the blaze.

Suspected militants

It is not known whether the prison housed any of the more than 200 Islamic militants rounded up in recent months as part of a crackdown on supporters of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The arrests came in the wake of the triple suicide bomb attacks against Western targets in Riyadh in May, which killed 35 people, including nine bombers.

Mohamed al-Ghamdi, a journalist with the Riyadh Daily, told the BBC he believed that since the prison is the largest in the kingdom it is likely that at least some of those arrested on suspicion of connection with al-Qaeda would be inside.

He said that the prison was modern and known for the high standards of its facilities and that nothing of this nature had happened there in the past.