Thirty-one inmates working in a prison garden in Uganda escaped when their guards chased after a rabbit, an army officer has said.

Five warders ran after the rabbit when it hopped out of some bushes, leaving the startled inmates of Kotido prison behind.

The warders lost the prisoners, and failed to catch their rabbit

The BBC's Nathan Etengu

"While the warders were chasing the rabbit, the inmates also took off," said Lieutenant Colonel John Baptist Mulindwa, an army commander in the north-eastern Karamoja region.

The inmates of the prison in Kotido included convicts and suspects arrested by the army during on-going operations to strip Karamajong warriors of illegal weapons.

Colonel Mulindwa said one of the convicts was blamed for the 1999 killing of 17 soldiers and six Karamajong vigilantes during an ambush in Panyangara, south of Kotido.

He said there was a danger that the prisoners on the run would take revenge on villagers who had assisted with their arrest.

Cattle-raiders

There has been a campaign to disarm the nomadic Karamajong herders who traditionally carry out raids on neighbouring tribes to steal cattle.

In recent years they have been using weapons obtained from soldiers and rebels fighting in the region that includes parts of north-western Kenya and south-eastern Sudan.

President Yoweri Museveni recently ordered the army to step up security around prisons following frequent jailbreaks, including at least one where armed Karamajong had helped comrades to escape.

The Uganda Prisons Service was sending a team to Karamoja to investigate the latest incident, spokeswoman Mary Kaddu said.

The BBC's Nathan Etengu in northern Uganda said that the security forces were hunting the escaped convicts.

"The warders lost the prisoners, and failed to catch their rabbit," he said.