Manila: Thirteen detainees facing drug charges have escaped from jail, the latest in a series of prison breaks in the Philippines. The 13 slipped out of the jail in a police camp in San Fernando city north of Manila before dawn yesterday, said Derrick Arnold Carreon, spokesman for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. The Philippines has frequently suffered mass escapes from prisons which are usually overcrowded, poorly maintained and inadequately guarded. In the country’s biggest jailbreak, more than 150 inmates escaped from a prison in southern Philippines in January when about a hundred gunmen stormed the facility. In August 2016, members of a Muslim militant group that pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group stormed a jail in the south and broke out 23 inmates.

Source: The Star February 27, 2017 00:46 UTC