Some 2,000 soldiers, policemen and militiamen are tracking down the 33 prison escapees still at large, including 22 Abu Sayyaf members, who bolted jail in the southern Philippine island province of Basilan on Saturday.  

Eight escapees, including four Abu Sayyaf men, have already been killed by pursuing lawmen and 12 others recaptured since 53 inmates staged a mass jailbreak at Basilan's provincial jail in Isabela, the provincial seat, before noon on Saturday, military public information chief Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lucero said Sunday.

Checkpoints have been put up on Basilan to keep the remaining escapees from fleeing the island, a strong hold of the Abu Sayyaf, which was branded by both Washington and Manila as a terrorist group with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

Lucero said some of the 33 escapees could possibly have used small boats to flee to small islands off Basilan while some others escaped to Abu Sayyaf lairs in the province or toward areas in Zamboanga provinces north of Basilan.

"Hopefully, we will have a successful operation for the recovery or recapture of these Abu Sayyaf men. Hopefully, we'll have positive developments," he said.

Meanwhile, police spokesman Joel Goltiao said National Police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane has ordered the Basilan provincial police office to "conduct relentless manhunt operations and account all the escapees."

Goltiao said the police are helping in the investigation behind the circumstances of the escape. Interior Secretary Jose Lina said the jail facility is being guarded by employees hired by the provincial government.

Basilan provincial spokesman Christopher Puno said earlier that 53 of the total 135 inmates at the jail were able to launch the jailbreak using a pistol smuggled in by a prison visitor.

They seized a jail guard and forced the opening of three of the four overcrowded cells, he said. Before escaping, the inmates ransacked the armory, taking away an M-203 grenade launcher, one M16 rifle and two shotguns, which they used in fighting their way out. Three of the jail guards were shot and wounded by the escapees in the incident.

Basilan Governor Wahab Akbar, who presided over an emergency meeting Sunday morning to map out plans to recapture the inmates, said that among those who escaped were three Abu Sayyaf chieftains who had been involved in numerous abductions over the years.

Akbar has ordered security forces to shoot and kill any escapee who refuses to surrender. "There is no negotiation," he said. "In the first place these people bolted their cells."

The sensational mass jailbreak came despite tightened security imposed after the killing of senior Abu Sayyaf leader Hamsiraji Sali and five other members of the group in Isabela last Thursday.

And civilian witnesses who had testified against some of the Abu Sayyaf members voiced fears about their safety, Lucero said.

"They are very apprehensive because they stood as witnesses against these Abu Sayyaf men. They have expressed their fears because of their (Abu Sayyaf members) escape," said Lucero of the witnesses.

Lucero said he has coordinated with the military Southern Command to provide security to the witnesses who had tagged the suspects as behind some kidnapping and murder incidents in Basilan.

But he dismissed insinuations that the jailbreak was in retaliation for the killing of Sali, one of the five Abu Sayyaf leaders wanted by the United States, which offered a reward of 5 million US dollars for their neutralization for their role in kidnapping 20 people, including three Americans, at a resort in the western Philippine province of Palawan in may 2001.

One of the Americans was beheaded days after the kidnapping and another was killed in a military rescue attempt in June 2002.

Security has been tightened since authorities arrested six suspected Abu Sayyaf members and seized 36 km of explosives in Metro Manila late last month, foiling their alleged plot to bomb trains and shopping malls in the capital region.

(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2004)