Eight suspected Islamists were shot dead by police Monday after they escaped from a high security jail in India by slitting the throat of a prison guard, an official said.

The members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had staged an overnight breakout from the prison in Bhopal by attacking a warder with sharpened steel plates before tying together bedsheets to scale several walls.   

"All of them were killed in a shoot-out on the outskirts of Bhopal. We asked them to surrender but they tried to break the police cordon," Yogesh Choudhary, Bhopal's inspector general of police, told AFP.