Philippines: escape from a prison on the island of Jolo, three dead

AFP

AFP

Sunday, 16 July, 2017 05:38

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Sunday, 16 July, 2017 05:38

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MANILA, Philippines-Three inmates were shot and killed Sunday, and a fourth was injured during an escape from a prison on the island of Jolo, a hideout of the islamist group Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines.

The four victims were part of a group of 14 people escaped from the police station, where a total of 32 suspects were detained for offences related to drug trafficking, according to the authorities.

“Some of the detainees are linked to members of the Abu Sayyaf”, pointed out, however, Mario Buyuccan, a responsible officer of the local police. “They have sawed the bars and jumped from the second floor on the roof of a municipal building adjacent to it. Our troops fought back and some detainees have been killed or wounded,” he added.

Runaways are common in the Philippines due to the poor state of prison facilities are often poorly kept.

In January, 150 inmates had escaped from a prison in the South which had been stormed by a hundred armed men.

The abu Sayyaf is an offshoot extremist insurgency separatist muslim who has done more than 120,000 dead since the 1970’s in the south of the archipelago, to the vast majority catholic.

It was created in the 1990s thanks to funding from a member of the family of the leader of Al-Qaeda Osama ben Laden. It has since split into several factions, one of which is specialized in the activities of villainous abductions.

Another has pledged allegiance to the organization islamic State (EI) and some of its members are cut off since the end of may in the neighborhoods of Marawi, a muslim city on the island of Mindanao.

In spite of a massive campaign of air bombardment and artillery, and the support of the american forces, the army, which is fighting for every house in the city, is still not managed to quell the uprising that has killed more than 500 people were killed and almost 400,000 displaced.

By taking control of Marawi, the jihadists had opened the doors of two prisons.