Bailey Cahall | AfPak Channel | Around 243 prisoners, including 30 "hardcore militants,"
escaped from the heavily guarded Central Prison in the city of Dera Ismail Khan
in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday night when more than 100 militants
armed with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy arms attacked the facility. The highly coordinated assault began when the
attackers blew up the prison's electricity line, detonated bombs they had
planted around the facility to breach its external wall, and opened fire on the
prison's security forces. According to
multiple reports, around 70 of the militants were in police uniforms, and they used
megaphones to call out to specific prisoners, freeing them from their cells
with hand grenades. At least 14 people
were killed in the attack, including six policemen and six Shi'a prisoners
whose throats were slashed by the gunmen.
Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban,
contacted multiple news agencies to claim responsibility for the assault, which
comes a little more than a year after the group attacked
the Central Jail in Bannu and freed about 400 prisoners. Dera Ismail Khan and the neighboring town of
Tank have been placed under a curfew while a search operation for the escaped
prisoners continues. Those released
include Abdul Hakim and Haji Illyas, two local Taliban commanders, as well as
Waleed Akbar, a sectarian militant suspected of killing Shi'a mourners during
an attack last year.
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