WORLD IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : KGB Agents Free Prison Hostages

KGB agents stormed a prison in a troubled region of Soviet Georgia, freeing hostages and ending a four-day standoff with seven heavily armed prisoners in a hail of gunfire that left four security officers wounded. The KGB intelligence service, in a statement carried by the official news agency Tass, said that the operation freed guards who had been taken hostage Saturday by convicts at a prison in Sukhumi, the regional capital of Abkhazia in the Georgian republic. “Despite armed resistance, the hostages were released during the storming of the (penal) center and all bandits were disarmed,” the statement said.