Dozens of drug addicts on Sunday broke out of a rehabilitation centre in Vietnam’s southern Dong Nai province, local media reported.

The incident comes just two weeks after more than 500 drug addicts staged a massive breakout at the same centre.

According to Vietnamese online newspaper VnExpress, over 100 addicts at the Dong Nai centre in Xuan Loc District damaged the facility’s assets on Sunday morning, before escaping.

It also said that centre staff had managed to extinguish a number of fires set by the escapees as a squad of 200 policemen descended on the premises by Sunday afternoon.

So far, 61 inmates have reportedly been returned to the centre, which sits about 100 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

Late last month, the provincial Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs denied rumours that the addicts protested against the centre’s overloading or poor living conditions there.

The centre currently houses nearly 1,500 addicts, most of them are ex-convicts and have AIDS, tuberculosis or mental illness.

– with other agencies