150 escape after Jihadis storm jail on Philippines

Birds fly, fish swim, and Muslims want their own autonomous region. Whether it be in France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands, or India, or Israel, or the UK, or even the United States, eventually, as soon as their numbers are large enough, they will announce “This is our area, and you don’t come in here.”

This is also the case in the Philippines where, to that end, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has stormed the North Cotabato District Jail in Kidapawan City in the southern Philippines, freeing 158 prisoners.

Manhunt underway after mass prison escape in Philippines; guard killed

By Euan McKirdy, CNN, January 4, 2017

(CNN)A manhunt continues in the Philippines after an armed raid led to a mass prison escape.

As many as 158 inmates fled the North Cotabato District Jail in Kidapawan City in the southern Philippines early Wednesday after armed men attacked the compound, according to Xavier Solda, the spokesman for the Philippines Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP).

Around 1:15 a.m. local time (12.15 p.m. Tuesday ET) more than 100 armed men attacked the facility, he said. The firefight lasted two hours. One jail officer was killed and another was injured during the conflict.

The inmates escaped through the back portion of the jail as the firefight raged, Solda said. Fourteen men have since been apprehended and six have been killed, he told CNN. Two inmates have voluntarily surrendered. The jail’s latest recorded population is 1,511 inmates.

More than 150 inmates of the Mindanao jail escaped when suspected Muslim rebels stormed the dilapidated facility in a pre-dawn raid, authorities said.

Islamist group suspected

Acting Provincial Jail Warden Supt. Peter John Bongngat Jr. told CNN affiliate CNN Philippines that members of the breakaway Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) group were suspected of being responsible for the attack.

He said some of the escapees were affiliated with the group, which is fighting for an an autonomous region for Muslims in the southern island of Mindanao, home to a sizable Muslim population, in this mainly Catholic country.

“(The escapees) are mostly our Muslim brothers and most of them are (MILF) members,” he told CNN Philippines. “But the others likely just went along with the jailbreak.”…