"Five detainees of the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) managed early Tuesday to flee from the prison of the political security agency in the country's northwestern port city of al- Hodayda," Saba quoted a provincial security official as saying.
Several members of the Yemeni al-Qaida offshoot were recently either captured or hunted by the Yemeni security authorities after a U.S.-backed offensive in the southern Abyan province routed the militants out of their strongholds they controlled for nearly a year during a security vacuum in the country.
Saba did not provide further details about how the terrorist prisoners escaped, but a security official told Xinhua that "they escaped the highly-guarded jail through a 30-meter-long tunnel they dug from their cell to a nearby cemetery."
The incident came two days after 10 al-Qaida suspects escaped from a prison in the southern port city of Aden.
Combating al-Qaida militants in the restive south is one of the challenges confronting current Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has promised to launch a national dialogue to settle disputes among all political factions and uproot the Yemeni branch of al-Qaida.
from XINHUA
2012-06-27 07:30:05
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