MANILA – Suspected Muslim rebels punched a hole in the wall of a provincial jail on a remote southern island in the Philippines and freed 31 prisoners before dawn yesterday, security officials said.
They killed one jail guard and wounded another during a 10-minute raid at the main prison on southern Basilan island, Supt Abubakar Tulawie, provincial police chief, told reporters.
“We got two of them. Their bodies were abandoned just outside the jail’s perimeter,” he said, adding the raiders rescued two Moro Islamic Liberation Front leaders detained there for their role in the beheading of soldiers on Basilan in 2007.
“These two rebel leaders are high-risk prisoners. We have organised a team together with the military units on the island to pursue them. We’ve started an internal inquiry to determine responsibility for the lax security in the jail.” The front, which is seeking broad autonomy in the southern Mindano island, is in peace talks with the government. Another Muslim rebel group Abu Sayyaf, once linked to al-Qaeda, is also fighting in the south, but it was not clear if any of their jailed members escaped.
Supt Tulawie said the raiders used sledgehammers to make an opening on the prison’s 18ft-high rear perimeter wall and used bolt-cutters to destroy the padlock of a jail cell where the two rebel commanders were held before shooting their way out.
Only four of 16 guards were on duty at that time.
The two rebel leaders who escaped were on trial for the murder of 14 soldiers in al-Barka town in July 2007. Twenty-nine other prisoners got out. The one-hectare facility has 65 inmates. Police authorities said it was the second mass jailbreak on the island after 53 inmates escaped during a riot in 2004.
Jailbreaks are common in the Philippines, where many of the more than 1,000 penitentiaries across the archipelago are overcrowded and guards are underpaid.
Meanwhile yesterday, tribal gunmen freed all hostages they had been holding for the past three days in the southern Philippines, witnesses and officials said.
The gunmen were to free the hostages early yesterday but a last-minute snag delayed the release by several hours. A Reuters team in Prosperidad town saw the hostages arrive in a convoy of cars from the mountain hideout of the gunmen late in the evening.
Officials said all 42 hostages were freed. The gunmen had been demanding that murder cases against them be dropped and had demanded police disarm rivals from the same tribe, with whom they are feuding.
Provincial officials said the feud had been referred to a council of tribal elders.
The gunmen took 71 people hostage from an elementary school and nearby homes in the lawless Mindanao region on Thursday, less than three weeks after a massacre in a nearby province.
The abductors had previously freed 29 of the hostages.
– (Reuters)