13 escape in prison break near Manila

PHILIPPINES - At least 13 “high-value” detainees facing drug charges have escaped from a jail in northern Philippines, the latest in a series of prison breaks in the country, according to authorities.

The escapees slipped out of the jail in a police camp in San Fernando City, north of the capital, Manila, before dawn on Sunday. “They sawed through the bars of the metal grille,” Derrick Arnold Carreon, spokesman for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, told the AFP news agency, adding that an investigation was under way to find out how they got the saw.

It was not clear how the prisoners obtained the metalcutting materials, and how they got past security at the prison gates.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer website reported that the escapees were inmates from the province of Bulacan, and have been in jail for at least five months. The website quoted Juvenal Azurin, an anti-drug agency official, as saying that the detainees are considered “highvalue targets, because of the volume of illegal drugs seized” from them. Azurin was also quoted as saying that a manhunt operation is being carried out in Manila and other nearby provinces.

(Aljazeera)