”She was able to speak and was conscious when she was taken to hospital,” Ulf Lindgren, head of information at the Stockholm county police, said to news agency TT.

The woman, reportedly in her mid-sixties, sustained injuries to the face and was taken to hospital after being attacked by a violent prisoner, brought in earlier in the day.

The woman was employed by an external security company, responsible for guarding prisoners in the holding cells.

She was subjected to punches and was kicked in the face several times, according to daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

According to the paper, the man had been brought in after going berserk on his family and it had taken six guards to restrain him at the time

Later, around 11am, the 65-year-old guard let him out of the cell to visit the bathroom.

”Then he jumped her and started beating her up badly, ” a police source revealed to daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

Two female officers and a lawyer, who were interrogating another prisoner in an adjacent room heard the commotion.

When the two officers tried to restrain the man, they too were subjected to punches to the face and body.

”Then a man came running and after him came more officers. Then it all stopped,” the source told DN.

”The sad thing is that he was brought in by six officers but that it was one guard, a woman, who let him out.”

However, according to Lindgren, there were others nearby for a reason.

”There were other staff, police officers, in the holding area, and they were able to stop the fight quickly,” he said to DN.

After the incident, officers from the south Stockholm police have been in talks regarding their own safety, as the incident made clear that a situation similar to that when a female prison guard recently was beaten to death by a prisoner could occur on their own premises.

The man is being held in the detention centre pending investigation. The female guard was taken to the nearby Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, south of the capital.