A gang used rocket launchers and heavy weapons to blow open the outer doors of a French prison and free a bank robber in a spectacular jail break early today.
A group of at least three men in police uniform attacked the prison in Fresnes, south of Paris, to free 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.
After firing at the watchtower, the men successfully entered the prison through two separate doors and blasted through the bars of Ferrara's cell, allowing him to escape.
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.
It was the third prison breakout this year in France.
