Asia

Home page

Asia

Yemeni police capture escaped al-Qaida prisoners

10 July 2012 22:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Yemeni police captured two al-Qaida prisoners who escaped from an intelligence jail in the country’s northwestern port city of al-Hodayda last month, the official Saba news agency reported Tuesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

"The police in the southern province of al-Dhalea managed to arrest two escaped detainees from the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)," Saba quoted a provincial security official as saying.

"The captured prisoners fled from the prison of the political security agency in the country’s northwestern port city of al- Hodayda last month along with three terrorists," Saba added.

The security official also urged people who had any information concerning the whereabouts of the other escaped detainees to contact security services, according to the agency.

Several members of the Yemeni al-Qaida offshoot were recently either captured or hunted by the Yemeni security authorities after a U.S.-backed offensive in the southern Abyan province routed the militants out of their strongholds that they had controlled for nearly a year.

On June 26, a security official told Xinhua that five al-Qaida militants escaped the highly-guarded jail in Hodayda through a 30- meter-long tunnel they dug from their cell to a nearby cemetery.

Combating al-Qaida militants in the restive south is one of the challenges confronting Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has vowed to launch a national dialogue to settle disputes among all political factions and uproot the Yemeni branch of al- Qaida.