HANOI: More than 400 Vietnamese drug addicts have escaped from a rehabilitation centre where they were detained to receive compulsory treatment.
The detainees, many wielding sticks, broke free from the centre near the port city of Haiphong in northeast Vietnam. “More than 400 inmates fled after breaking the door and threatened the guards of the centre with sticks,” Nguyen Huy Hoang, an official from Thuy Nguyen district, where the centre is located, said.
Police found some of the addicts back at their homes, while around 30 others voluntarily returned to the treatment centre. “The police are searching for those who are still at large,” in Haiphong, Hoang added.
The communist government enforces the compulsory treatment programme for the country’s estimated 140,000 drug addicts.
AFP
