Harare - Police fired directly at prisoners who rioted at a high security jail in Harare last week, Zimbabwe Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa told parliament on Wednesday.
Mnangagwa said prisoners armed themselves with pieces of wood and bricks and began attacking officers at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison on Friday because they thought the police "[did] not have bullets".
"When the officers felt that they were in serious danger that is when they fired and one inmate died in prison," Mnangagwa said, contradicting earlier claims from a prisons spokesman that the first reported casualty was not shot but died in a stampede.