MOSUL: Fourteen prisoners charged with "terrorism" escaped from a prison via a tunnel in the north Iraq city of Mosul on Thursday, security officials said, in the latest jailbreak in Iraq.
"Thirty-five prisoners tried to escape from a prison in Al-Faisaliyah" in central Mosul, said Colonel Mohammed al-Juburi, of the Nineveh province police. Security forces "arrested 21 of them, but 14 others were able to escape from the prison," Juburi said.
All 35 were charged with terrorism-related offences, he said, adding that an open-ended curfew was instituted in Mosul around 8:00 am (0500 GMT) on Thursday due to the jailbreak.
Colonel Rahim al-Shammari, spokesman for Nineveh police, said later on Thursday that the prisoners who escaped did so via a tunnel under the prison that was about 50 metres (yards) long.
Juburi had said earlier that no clashes took place during the escape.
But Dr Mohammed Salem said that City Hospital, where he works in Mosul, had received two prisoners with bullet wounds to their legs.
A police source said that the wounded prisoners were among the 21 arrested trying to escape.
An interior ministry official confirmed that 35 prisoners had attempted to escape in Mosul, but that 21 of them were apprehended.
Jailbreaks and prison unrest are relatively common in Iraq.
Officials said on August 6 that four prisoners and a guard were killed in clashes at a prison in the central Iraqi city of Hilla, during which eight inmates escaped.
Six Iraqi police and 11 inmates were killed in a Baghdad jail mutiny in May, while 12 suspected Al-Qaeda members escaped from prison in the southern city of Basra in mid-January. At least two of the Basra escapees have been recaptured.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
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