THIRTEEN detainees facing drug charges escaped from jail on Sunday, the latest in a series of prison breaks, authorities said.
The 13 slipped out of the jail in a police camp in San Fernando City, Pampanga, before dawn, said Derrick Arnold Carreon, spokesman for the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
“They sawed through the bars of the metal grille,” he said, adding an investigation was under way to find out how they got the saw.
Elite police units have been mobilized to track down the 13 inmates, including a policeman.
Members of the Philippine National Police Regional Safety Battalion were deployed along the possible escape routes.
PDEA said they were coordinating with other PNP stations in Pampanga, Tarlac and Bulacan in the manhunt.
Mass escapes from prisons, which are usually overcrowded, poorly maintained and inadequately guarded, are not uncommon.
In the country’s biggest jailbreak, more than 150 inmates escaped a prison in Mindanao in January after about a hundred gunmen stormed the facility.
In August 2016 members of a Muslim extremist group that pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group stormed a jail in the south and broke out 23 inmates. With AFP