Five of the guards were hospitalized with serious head injuries.

The demonstrations broke out when members of the Islamic Front of Fighters for the Greater East (IBDA-C) rejected the harassment of prison security staff, who had come to conduct an inspection of their quarters.

The IBDA-C, founded in 1985, has been held responsible for a number of attacks on bars, discotheques and churches in Istanbul in furtherance of its campaign for a Turkish Islamic state. The chief of the IBDA-C, Salih Mirzabeyoglu, who was arrested in 1998 for violence against the state, was among those held in the jail.

Some 20 ambulances were seen leaving the prison compound during the demonstrations, Anatolia said, as police and gendarmes stepped up security around the facility.

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