ALMATY: At least two people were killed and more than 80 wounded in a prison riot in Kazakhstan that ended when police in the ex-Soviet state stormed the penal colony, Kazakh media reported Thursday.

Interior ministry troops stormed the penal colony near the village of Granitny in the barren northern steppe near the Russian border after inmates barricaded themselves inside their cells, Interfax-Kazakhstan reported.

Police did not use firearms against the rioters, acting head of the regional prison administration Zhanat Keshubaeyv told the agency. Among the dead was a man who set himself on fire and jumped from a second floor balcony, he said.

The majority of the injuries were caused by prisoners stabbing and beating one another during the chaos, he added.

Local media in the Central Asian state reported last week that several inmates at the prison colony had performed acts of self-mutilation as a form of protest against inhumane conditions, including torture by their guards.

Millions of victims of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin`s purges were shipped to Kazakhstan, a resource-rich former Soviet republic bordering China and Russia, in which a massive network of penal colonies sprung up.

Although little independent information is available on the current conditions in Kazakh prisons, local media has reported on several incidents this year of prisoners mutilating themselves as a form of protest.

Astana currently holds the rotating chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a leading pan-Atlantic security and democracy body also focused on human rights, a move which angered some activists.

Kazakhstan has been ruled since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 by strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former head of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic`s Communist party.

BDST: 13:00 HRS, August 12, 2010