Six Palestinian militants escape Israeli maximum security prison.

The discovery this morning at 4 a.m probably several hours after escape  from the prison of Gilboa, in the north of the country, through an underground tunnel. Five belong to the Islamic Jihad and the sixth is a former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Shin Bet, drones and molecular dogs on their tracks.  

Jerusalem (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Six Palestinian detainees escaped from an Israeli maximum security prison in the early hours of today. The discovery took place at four in the morning, but the prisoners may have escaped much earlier. This is what police sources and the Jewish State media report, according to which the escaped prisoners allegedly belong to Islamic fundamentalist militia groups. 

Initial information indicates that five of the fugitives belong to the Islamic Jihad movement, while the sixth is a former commander of an armed group affiliated with the Fatah party. The escapees were all cellmates inside the Gilboa prison in northern Israel; they escaped after secretly building a tunnel in the ground. 

"During the night," national police spokesman Eli Levy explained to Kan Radio, "we received a number of reports about suspicious figures in the cultivated fields and from the prison service. After a quick investigation, it was discovered that the prisoners had disappeared from their cell and escaped by losing track of them." The security forces, assisted by the army and the Shin Bet (internal intelligence), immediately launched a massive manhunt, using drones and molecular dogs; the suspicion is that they tried to reach the nearby West Bank or the border with Jordan. 

According to reports in several local media outlets, all six fugitives had been sentenced to life in prison for deadly attacks on Israeli targets and were considered "very dangerous." Three of them had previously attempted to escape. A police source told Channel 12 that this is "one of the most serious incidents" in the country's recent history. One of the escapees would be Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, originally from Jenin in the West Bank. The Islamic extremist group carried out bombings and targeted attacks against Israelis during the years of the Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.

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• palestine
• prisons
• prison break
• escape
• police
• security
• extremism
• islam
• shin bet