Detainees launch deadly Baghdad jail break
Following a police manhunt after Friday's escape, Iraqi security forces recaptured 13 prisoners and killed one, while another eight prisoners were still at large.
A police colonel said the detainees had seized weapons from guards before their escape from the al-Adela facility in the northern Baghdad area of Kadhimiyah.
The prisoners had lured a guard into their cell while his colleagues were sleeping, claiming an inmate was critically ill. They then stabbed the security guard to death, two senior security officials said.
Several guards were later detained and questioned over suspicions they had helped in the escape, a prison official said.
The jail break was the latest in a series of prison escapes in Iraq. More than 500 inmates escaped, including several al-Qaeda leaders, and dozens were killed, after an al-Qaeda linked group attacked two prisons last July.
The security breaches have cast doubts on the ability of the Iraqi authorities to secure the country amid increasing violence.
Sectarian violence
Also on Friday, a series of car bombs and attacks killed at least nine people, with at least 16 others wounded.
A car bomb exploded near a security checkpoint in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killing at least three people, and injuring at least four.
In a drive-by shooting in Baghdad's Ghazaliyah area, gunmen shot and killed two people, including a government employee, in their car.
A car bomb also exploded near a fish market in Nahrawan, near the capital, killing four people and wounding at least 12.
Violence in Iraq has reached a level this year not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of rampant sectarian killings. Nearly 950 people were killed in the month of November alone.
More people died in the first eight days of December 2013 than in the whole of last December, according to AFP news agency figures based on security and medical sources.
Al Jazeera
