HO CHI MINH CITY, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Over 500 drug addicts damaged many properties of a detoxification center in Vietnam's southern Dong Nai province and ran away from it, local media reported Monday.
A total of 562 drug addicts, including 56 women, escaped from the Dong Nai Drug Detoxification Center in Xuan Loc District on Sunday night after breaking many of its windows, gates and walls with hoes, shovels and fire extinguishers, online newspaper VnExpress reported.
The addicts walked to the nearby National Road 1 and on the way, they damaged properties of some roadside residential houses.
The break-out could have been caused by the center's newcomers whose psychology is unstable, Ho Van Loc, vice director of the provincial Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said, denying rumors that the addicts protested the center's overloading or poor living conditions there.
By Monday morning, nearly 150 drug addicts had been brought back to the center.
The center currently houses nearly 1,500 addicts, most of them are ex-convicts and have AIDS, tuberculosis or mental illness.
