Suspected guerrillas stormed a decrepit jail in the major southern city of Kidapawan on Wednesday, freeing 158 prisoners and killing a guard, in what authorities said may have been a bid to free fellow rebels.
Forty of the inmates had been recaptured by yesterday afternoon, with seven others killed in the manhunt that involved security forces firing mortars at some escapees in remote farmlands and jungles, jail authorities said.
But they emphasised there were many obstacles in the operation. “This is a very wide area. Aside from sugar, rubber and coconut plantations, there are areas and camps held by rebels that we cannot easily enter,” jail warden Peter Bongngat said.
Thirty-nine of the escapees were accused of rape, while 35 were in jail for murder, according to a list released by prison authorities.
In Kabacan, a farming town about 30kms from Kidapawan, residents tipped off search teams about inmates who were hiding and sleeping in rubber and palm oil plantations, using thick vegetation as cover.
“We are alarmed because (prisoners) are convicted criminals. But what’s good is that our citizens are co-operating,” Kabacan mayor Herlo Guzman said.
The southern Philippines is home to a decades-old separatist insurgency, as well as extremist gangs that have recently declared allegiance to the Islamic State.
The southern region of Mindanao is the ancestral homeland of the Muslim minority in the largely Catholic Philippines.
The badly overcrowded jail in Kidapawan, 950kms south of Manila, housed about 1,500 inmates. It is a run-down former school building that militants have targeted repeatedly over the past 15 years.
In 2007, Khair Mundos, a Filipino who would later become one of the world’s most wanted accused terrorists escaped along with 48 other inmates. Mundos, with a $500,000 bounty from the US government, was recaptured in Manila seven years later.
However Wednesday’s jailbreak was the biggest in the nation’s history, Bureau of Jail Management and Penology spokesman Xavier Solda said.
Solda said 13 “high-value targets” — seven rebels and six organised crime gang members — had not been able to escape on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Bongngat said the attackers were believed to be militants who had broken away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the nation’s largest Muslim rebel organisation which is in peace talks with the government.
The MILF, which has about 10,000 armed followers, has been fighting since the 1970s for independence or autonomy.
The rebellion has claimed more than 120,000 lives although the MILF has in recent years observed a ceasefire as part of the peace process.
