Inmates Linked to Al-Qaeda Escape From Iraqi Prison

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 24 -- Five inmates awaiting execution and 11 others accused of belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq escaped from a makeshift prison built near a former palace of Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq, and authorities suggested Thursday that guards there may have helped them.

Authorities imposed a curfew on Tikrit, a city of about 250,000 north of Baghdad, after the escape of the prisoners Wednesday night. By dawn, police had set up checkpoints inside the city and on the roads leading out of Tikrit, best known for its proximity to Hussein's birthplace. Iraqi army patrols combed the city and carried out a manhunt in villages to the east and south of Tikrit, while the U.S. military provided dogs and helped search from the air.

At least one of the prisoners was caught in his hometown of Ishaki, 40 miles south of Tikrit, said Col. Hatem Akram, a spokesman for the Tikrit police. Akram said the prisoner was not one of the inmates sentenced to death.

Officials said the other inmates were believed to have headed to regions east of Tirkit controlled by the Albu Ajeel tribe, a stretch of territory near Wadi al-Tharthar that has long served as a conduit for Sunni Arab insurgents. Police feared that if the escapees managed to reach the areas, relatives there would provide them refuge.

There were conflicting accounts on how the men escaped.

Maj. Bassim Hamdi, who serves with an anti-terrorism task force in the province, said one of the guards allowed a prisoner to come out of his cell to meet a visiting relative, who had arrived there at about 10 p.m. The prisoner managed to wrest the guard's weapon from him, then at gunpoint, forced the guard to unlock the cell in which the 15 others were held. Several of them were said to be leading members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group, and one of them had been sentenced to death in four separate cases, Hamdi said.

In another account, provided by other officials in Tikrit and Baghdad, the prisoners wrenched open a ventilation window using metal fixtures from a sink and fled at a time that the prison was lightly guarded. Iraq ended a four-day holiday on Wednesday, and many guards there had been given time off.

But other officials in Tikrit and with the Interior Ministry in Baghdad said guards at the prison were suspected of making the escape possible.

Even before an investigation hadbegun, the chief of the Tikrit police fired Col. Mohammed Jabara, the head of the province's anti-terrorism task force. Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said several officials responsible for the prison, housed in a former school of Islamic studies, were detained while an investigation was carried out. Police said the entire night shift at the prison -- at least seven guards -- were taken into custody.

Rumors circulated in the town that two of the guards had already fled the prison. Officials declined to comment.

Special correspondent Muhanned Saif in Tikrit and Qais Mizher contributed to this report.