A huge fire tore through a maximum-security jail in Siberia late on Friday as prisoners and guards clashed, Russian officials said.

State news agency RIA-Novosti cited a local official as saying the fire covered about 30,000 square meters (320,000 square feet) but had been localized.

The No 15 penal colony in Angarsk, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the Mongolian border, was the scene of a full-blown riot, according to local human rights activists.

One activist, Pavel Glushenko, said on social media that "full-scale hostilities'" were taking place at the maximum-security prison. Others told the AFP news agency that the mutiny broke out on Thursday after guards beat an inmate.

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Riot police deployed

They said riot police had surrounded the colony and were turning cars away.

Russia's penal service said inmates "attacked a guard" while others cut themselves with glass from broken surveillance cameras.

The service said the guard was hospitalized and an investigation into the disturbance has been opened.

There was no official information about damage at the prison, some 4,000 kilometers east of Moscow, which holds about 1,200 inmates.

Rights group For Human Rights on Thursday published a video link on its website of the inmate with bloody gauze around his arm, who says he had been choked and beaten, and then cut a vein in protest.

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Transparent investigation urged

Another NGO, named Public Verdict, published an appeal to law enforcement agencies for a transparent investigation of what happened, saying access to prisons by independent monitors and attorneys was being denied due to coronavirus quarantine measures.

In videos seen by AFP that Khromenkov said were sent by prisoners to his organization, inmates are seen standing in the work yard of the prison, part of which is on fire.

"They are killing us," the man filming says of the guards, as other men shout "Help us!" while showing knife marks on their arms. He claimed that two inmates had been killed.

mm/bk (AFP, AP)

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