Six armed inmates killed themselves after they took hostage a prison warder and a guard at a jail in Taiwan on Thursday.
The AFP noted that the justice ministry confirmed that the inmates did in fact take their own lives after freeing the hostages, ending the hours-long standoff.
"We tried to use all kinds of means to persuade them to release the hostages so the incident could come to a peaceful end and to prevent an unfortunate situation. We regret that six people took their lives," said Wu Hsien-chang, chief of the ministry's corrections agency.
CNN reported that the whole incident began when the six prisoners claimed they were sick and went to the prison infirmary. There, they took the keys off a staffer and got into the weapons storage room, packed with handguns and rifles.
The warden and head of prison guards gave themselves up as hostages.
Throughout the ordeal, the men proclaimed their innocence up until the time they pulled the trigger.
The hostages were freed unharmed.