Islamist militants break out of Lebanon prison

BEIRUT—Lebanese security forces captured one of five Islamist militants who escaped from the country’s main jail on Saturday outside a Palestinian refugee camp, a security official told AFP.

“Mauritanian national Medhat Hassan Khalil Ahmed, one of the inmates belonging to Fatah al-Islam who escaped earlier today from Roumieh prison, was captured just outside the Beddawi refugee camp” in northern Lebanon, the official said on condition of anonymity.

“The search for the other four is ongoing,” he added.

Five members of Al-Qaeda-inspired group Fatah al-Islam, which staged a bloody uprising against the Lebanese army in the summer of 2007, escaped from the Roumieh prison northeast of Beirut earlier on Saturday.

Two Syrians, a Lebanese, a Kuwaiti and two Mauritanians, including Ahmed, used sheets knotted together to climb down the side of a building, sawed through a fence inside the prison and then mingled with visitors, having changed into civilian clothing, before leaving unobserved, it said in a statement.

Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces said a sixth inmate attempting to flee had been caught inside prison grounds and was under interrogation.

Roumieh, the oldest and largest of Lebanon’s overcrowded prisons, has witnessed sporadic prison breaks in recent years and escalating riots over the past months as inmates living in poor conditions demand better treatment.

Fatah Al-Islam battled the Lebanese army two years ago in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon.

The fighting killed some 400 people, including 168 soldiers, and deadly clashes also broke out in the nearby port city of Tripoli. Some Islamist leaders escaped despite a 15-week army siege of the camp.

The militant group is also accused of being behind twin bus bombings in a Christian suburb northeast of Beirut that left three dead and close to 20 wounded in 2007.