Five prisoners and three soldiers were killed Saturday in a failed attempt by some inmates to break out of a prison in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a corrections officer said.
Twenty-one people were wounded in the Saturday morning incident, said Col. Abdikani Khalaf, spokesman for the Somali army's custodial corps.
Speaking after the incident was over, he told reporters that some inmates armed with small arms and hand grenades exchanged fire with guards.
State-run media reported that an elite police unit intervened to thwart the attempted jailbreak.
The gunfire and explosions had interrupted weeks of relative calm for residents of Mogadishu, which faces sporadic attacks from the militant group al-Shabab.
Somalia National TV said in a post on their Facebook account that the inmates who died were members of al-Shabab who had been sentenced to death. But the group has not claimed responsibility for the incident.
Somali authorities said they had launched an investigation into how inmates were able to acquire weapons.
Al-Shabab has been fighting Somalia's central government for nearly two decades.
