More than 1000 police forces scoured the streets searching for 100 inmates who escaped from an overcrowded prison in Indonesia. The inmates set fire to the facility expressing their anger toward the police for poor living conditions in the jail.

Sumatra Island's Tanjung Gusta jail was blanketed by flames while firefighters worked overnight to put them out by Friday. Reports say that approximately 150 prisoners escaped. The police and national forces are trying to pin down 100 prisoners after arresting scores of inmates overnight.

In Sumatra's Medan city on Thursday, prisoners set fires in the jail and threw bottles at prison guards.

The inmates included terror convicts, who set the prison on fire and escaped from an overcrowded jail after setting the prison ablaze in riots that left five people dead.

The riots began after inmates began scrambling inside the prison.

The incident was a protest against power cuts and a shortage water supplies in the prison.

Prisoners are contained in overcrowded jails and TanjungGusta is just like other prisons in area.

The only exception is that the prison houses more inmates than double its capacity, designed to hold 1,054. On Friday, inmates retained control of the facility as they were conversing among themselves in front of their cells, Zee News reported.

Armed security surrounded the facility on Friday, the first Friday in Ramadan celebrated by the predominantly Muslim majority in Indonesia.

They allowed in about two dozen soldiers but did not let police enter, reporters said.

"We don't like police, they are inhumane, they frequently beat us," a prisoner was quoted as saying during the protest, by Agence France Presse.

Police spokesman for North Sumatra, Heru Prakoso, said inmates are scheduled to hold talk with a government official to get past the impasse. The negotiations would be a bid to break the standoff between the inmates and the police.

"Seven inmates will represent the prisoners and will negotiate later today with a senior official of the justice.and human rights ministry," he said in a BBC news report.

Five individuals - three inmates and two prison workers - were killed in the aftermath of the siege, Prakoso said.