BEIRUT - April 24, 2008 (AFP) - Prisoners took seven warders hostage in a mutiny at Lebanon's largest prison in Rumieh, eight kilometres (five miles) northeast of Beirut, on Thursday, a security official told AFP.

Negotiations were under way with the rioters to try to secure the warders' release, the official said.
"The chief of internal security, Antoine Shakuri, is currently negotiating with the prisoners to try to secure their release before we lose hope of a peaceful resolution and have to resort to force."

The official said that the rioters had set fire to their cells in the block holding convicted inmates. An AFP photographer saw a plume of smoke billowing over the prison and troop transporters deployed inside the compound.

Lebanon's LBC television reported that the rioters were demanding an improvement in their prison conditions and a reduction in their sentences.

Academic Omar al-Nashabi, who has carried out a study on the prison told AFP that more than 4,000 prisoners were being held in the jail which was originally designed in 1971 to hold a maximum of 1,500.

"The building where the mutiny erupted houses nearly 950 prisoners, 225 of them foreigners, mainly Palestinians or Syrians," he said.

The security official said the disturbances did not affect the remand section of the prison where detainees suspected of taking part in a deadly Islamist uprising in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp last summer are being held.

Four senior security officials detained on suspicion of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri are also being held in the remand section at the recommendation of the UN commission of inquiry into his killing.