A prisoner, who had escaped from the jail in Varna a month ago, was detained after a shootout with police in the Bulgarian town of Silistra on Wednesday.

The 41-year-prisoner was detected in the centre of Silistra and recognised by police officers. They tried to arrest him, but the prisoner opened fire at them. As police officers started chasing the criminal, a shootout ensued.

The criminal then entered a taxi and hijacked it and asked the driver to take him to a randomly chosen address.

Arriving at the address, the fugitive got off the taxi, barricaded himself in a nearby house which was empty at the time.

The prisoner continued to fire after barricading himself. After some time the prisoner was neutralised and taken to police custody. Luckily, no one was injured in the shootout.

This comes only a day after a shootout between police and criminals took place in Sofia.

The shootout ensued after two armed attackers robbed BGN 3000 and two kilogrammes of gold from a pawn shop on the Lomsko shose boulevard in the neighbourhood of Nadezhda.

The attackers opened fire at police officers who returned in self-defence. A chase and shootout ensued in the Razsadnika neighbourhood. One of the robbers was shot and later died of his wounds. Later the second robber was detained.

It turned out that the killed robber was a former police officer, who had been released from prison after serving a sentence for armed robbery.