Sixteen prisoners, most of them facing robbery and murder charges, escaped Thursday from a jail in a southern Philippine city, a local official said. According to dpa, the detainees sawed off the iron grills of their cell in Cotabato City Jail, 960 kilometres south of Manila, and lowered themselves into a river using their blankets as rope. Cotabato City Mayor Japal Guiani said one of the escapees was recaptured and said that they bolted from jail because prison officers prevented the detainees from performing Islamic prayers. Guiani said teams of police officers and soldiers have been dispatched to hunt down the escapees.
