At least 75 prisoners, including members of Brazil’s most powerful drug cartel, have broken free from a Paraguayan jail in an escape that was likely facilitated by prison officers, officials say.

Authorities discovered a narrow tunnel, which was carefully hidden to avoid detection, though it is believed inmates were provided with inside help.

Paraguay’s justice minister, Cecilia Perez, said: “It’s an operation that took days and it is impossible that the officials did not realise that they were leaving ... obviously this was a paid plan.”

Authorities had received prior information that an escape was being planned, Ms Perez added.

It has also been alleged many of the prisoners were allowed to walk free through the main gate by jail guards, with the tunnel built as a cover-up for the operation.

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“We found the tunnel and believe that it was a cover-up to legitimise or hide the release of the prisoners,” interior minister Euclides Acevedo said. “There was complicity with people” at the jail, he added.

The escaped prisoners included gang members from First Capital Command (PCC), Brazil’s most powerful and sophisticated organised crime group, the government said.

The PCC, which has almost 30,000 members, is involved in drug and arms trafficking across Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Colombia.

Inspections at the prison complex in the eastern city of Pedro Juan Caballero, near the Brazilian border, revealed hundreds of sandbags stored in a single cell.

Intelligence also suggests that inmates had been allowed to leave in smaller groups over a number of days, Mr Acevedo said.

The director of the prison, Christan Gonzalez, and six other prison officials have since been fired and arrested, according to reports.

Paraguay’s National Police have launched a hunt for the escapees, a number of whom participated in a massacre which left 10 inmates dead at the prison in June last year.

The Brazilian authorities in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul have issued an alert, with state police and the armed forces working in the area to track down the fugitives.

Concerns have been raised that some of the escaped prisoners have already crossed into Brazil. Burnt-out vehicles have been found on the Brazilian side of the border.