Al-Qaida in prison escape

AT least 40 al-Qaida prisoners have escaped from jail in Yemen.

In a carefully organised operation, the militants attacked their guards and seized their weapons just as bands of heavily armed attackers descended on the prison in Mukalla on the Arabian Sea.

The escapees included militants convicted on terror charges or held in protective custody pending trial.

The last major jail breakout by al-Qaida in Yemen was in 2006, when 23 escaped in Sanaa, among them Qassim al-Raimi, who has become the dominant figure in al-Qaida’s most active franchise.

The branch has been linked to several nearly successful attacks on US targets, including the plot to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner in December 2009. The group also put sophisticated bombs into US-addressed parcels that made it onto cargo flights.