The child killer, 52, is currently in an induced coma after being battered senseless by another inmate at HMP Frankland just after 9am on Thursday
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Soham murderer Ian Huntley has a "five per cent chance" of survival after having his head split by a metal pole in a brutal prison attack.
The child killer, 52, is currently in an induced coma after being battered senseless by another inmate at HMP Frankland just after 9am on Thursday.
Medics are said to have "worked miracles" to keep him alive after the prison staff who found Huntley after the bludgeoning had presumed he was dead.
A one source told the Sun: "It is still touch and go, and he could get worse.
"But it is extraordinary that he is still alive."
Guards found the murderer "totally unresponsive and unable to breathe" and lying in a pool of his own blood after the attack.
Medical crews, including an air ambulance, raced to the County Durham jail and placed him in an induced coma before taking him to hospital by road.
Sources claim his attacker was triple killer and rapist Anthony Russell, 43, who cracked Huntley over the head with a three-foot spiked metal pole, hitting him at least six times.
Russell strangled Nicole McGregor, 31, to death before dumping her body in woodland near Leamington Spa.
He also murdered Julie Williams, 58, and her son David, 32, during a week-long crime spree in October 2020.
Huntley is serving at least 40 years for the murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002.
School friends Holly and Jessica vanished after leaving a family barbecue to go and buy some sweets.
They were lured into the home of school caretaker Huntley, who murdered them before disposing of their bodies in a ditch.
Following a widespread police search, their bodies were found a week later near an airbase, 12 miles from Soham.
Suspicions were raised about Huntley after he gave detailed interviews to the press about the girls, and he appeared to take an unusual interest in the case.
His chilling responses to questions led journalists to raise concerns with the police.
Huntley was convicted in 2003 after pleading not guilty.
His then fiancee, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's school in the Cambridgeshire town, was given a three-and-a-half-year sentence for perverting the course of justice by giving Huntley a false alibi.
She infamously turned on Huntley as he sat in the dock during his murder trial, describing him as "that thing in the box".
She was granted a lifelong anonymity order in 2005, which protects her new identity indefinitely.
