Questions remain over Sri Lanka's prison 'massacre'

Sri Lanka's opposition has said that the deaths of dozens of prisoners, killed during clashes at a prison in the capital was a massacre.

A spokesman for the main opposition party said that the 27 inmates who died at Colombo's Welikada prison were "gunned down".

The government says they were killed in exchanges of fire during a riot after prisoners obtained and fired weapons.

The incident is the bloodiest prison violence in nearly three decades.

Charles Haviland reports.