2:52am Monday 22nd March 2010
© Press Association 2011
Soham murderer Ian Huntley is in hospital after reportedly having his throat slashed by a fellow prison inmate.
The 36-year-old was attacked on Sunday in Frankland Prison in County Durham, where he is serving two life sentences for murdering schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
He was taken to an undisclosed outside hospital, where his condition is not believed to be life-threatening, the Ministry of Justice said.
Prison officials have launched an investigation into what happened.
It has been reported that Huntley's throat was slashed with a makeshift knife, and the child killer was found by prison staff lying in a pool of blood.
He was convicted of murdering Holly and Jessica, who were both 10, in December 2003 after they vanished from their homes in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2002.
Huntley, a caretaker at the secondary school in Soham, and his then girlfriend Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant in Holly and Jessica's junior school class, initially told police they knew nothing of the circumstances surrounding the girls' disappearance.
But it emerged at their trial at the Old Bailey that Huntley had met Holly and Jessica as they walked past his home, enticed them inside and killed them before hiding their remains.
Huntley was given two life terms after being convicted of the girls' murders. Carr was jailed after being convicted of perverting the course of justice and has now been released from prison.
The assault is not the first time Huntley has been attacked in prison as in September 2005, an inmate threw boiling water on him while he was on the healthcare wing at the high-security Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire. He has also tried to commit suicide while in prison on three occasions.
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