US search for Iraqis who escaped military jail

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Five suspected insurgents who escaped
from a U.S. military prison in northern Iraq by cutting through
the fence remain on the run after three days, the U.S. military
said on Thursday.

“We continue to search for those five,” Major General Rick
Lynch told reporters at a regular briefing.

He said the U.S. military treated Tuesday’s overnight
escape from a jail holding 1,300 inmates in Kurdish northern
Iraq as an isolated incident, adding that photographs of the
jail breakers had been circulated in the area.

It was the first such escape from Fort Suse, one of three
main prisons for “security detainees” suspected or convicted of
rebellion. Records show some 70 prisoners have escaped from
other U.S. facilities in Iraq.

The U.S. military is holding more than 14,000 people in
Iraq, many of them from the Sunni minority that is the center
of the insurgency against the new, Shi’ite-led administration.