A long-awaited exchange of prisoners between Moscow and Kiev has begun, Russian state television reported on Saturday, broadcasting footage of buses leaving a jail in the capital.

Afghan commandos have freed 47 prisoners from two Taliban jails in northern Baghlan and Kunduz provinces, officials said on Tuesday.

His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani issued an Amiri gesture pardoning a number of prisoners, on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan.

Nearly 300 Syrians suspected of belonging to the Islamic State militant group have been freed because they have ‘no blood on their hands’, Kurdish authorities who were holding them said.

Libya is a major departure point in North Africa for migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, mainly from other parts of Africa.

Special forces have freed 61 prisoners from a Taliban-controlled jail in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, an official said Friday.

The pardon included 274 inmates, 115 of them were expatriates, Oman News Agency reported.

The French government pointed to possible security failings on Monday after a notorious gangster used a helicopter to stage his second brazen jailbreak of a crime career inspired by films such as ‘Scarface’.

US President Donald Trump welcomed three former US prisoners who landed at a military base near Washington on Thursday after being released by North Korea, thanking leader Kim Jong Un and sounding upbeat on a planned summit between the two.

Fourteen officials from Saddam Hussein's regime are still in Iraq's prisons, 15 years after the late dictator was deposed by a US-led invasion in 2003, according to an AFP survey.

Egyptian prison authorities executed on Tuesday five inmates who had been sentenced to death, four of them over a bombing that killed military cadets, security officials said.

Authorities in Ivory Coast speculated Monday that a guard may have allowed nearly 100 inmates to escape a prison in the west African country, the latest in a string of jail breaks.