AKIPRESS.COM - More than 200 inmates escaped from a jail in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi late on Monday when they overpowered prison guards after being allowed to leave their cells following a series of earthquakes, local officials and police said, Reuters reported.

The jailbreak began just before midnight and continued into the early hours of Tuesday after hundreds of prisoners were allowed into the courtyard of the District Malir prison because of the tremors, Zia-ul-Hasan Lanjar, the provincial law minister, told reporters at the scene on Tuesday.

The jailbreak was one of the largest ever in Pakistan, Lanjar said. The prison, which houses 6,000 inmates, is in the Malir district of Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city.

Prisoners ran through the area throughout the night, some of them barefoot, with police giving chase, local TV footage showed. About 80 of those who escaped had been caught, said Murad Ali Shah, the provincial chief minister.

The jail's superintendent, Arshad Shah, told reporters that there were 28 prison guards on duty at night, and that "only a few of such a large number of prisoners escaped". He said the prison did not have security cameras.

Officials said the inmates, many of them heroin users, had been unnerved by the earthquakes.