Six Palestinian prisoners escaped through tunnel from top-security prison in Israel

Six Palestinian prisoners, convicted of terrorism in Israel and considered dangerous, escaped this morning from the Gilboa high security prison, in the northwest of the country, apparently digging a tunnel, Israeli authorities have confirmed.

“Following the report by the Israeli prison service on the escape of six prisoners from Gilboa, a powerful force of police officers, as well as border police and army officers, began search operations and capture “, a police spokesperson reported.

According to the Hebrew press, one of the escapees is the well-known prisoner Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander in Jenin city of Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was serving time for several deadly attacks, including one attack against the Likud siege in 2002. that killed six people.

The other five are members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – considered a terrorist by Israel and the United States – also from Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, where gunshots were heard on Monday morning.

It was not the first time they tried to escape from Gilboa Prison, located northwest of Beit She’an, near the Sea of ​​Galilee, and it is “one of the incidents. most serious ”in recent memory of prisons in Israel. that it responds to a “serious attack on security and intelligence”, according to prison sources.

All six inmates were serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis and they are considered very dangerous by the Israeli authorities, who have deployed a powerful device in the region, which includes helicopters, drones, special forces and dogs.

“During the night, we received information that suspicious characters had been seen in the harvests of the prison services, who quickly discovered that the detainees were not in their cells and had escaped”police spokesman Eli Levy told Kan public radio.

Prison officials learned of the disappearance at around 4 a.m. local time (1 a.m. GMT) during a count following the information, although it is believed they could have fled the hours earlier.

“Security officers from neighboring communities are on alert about the leak and checkpoints have been established on all roads in the region,” the police pointed out.

In a separate statement, the military said it had assigned a plane to aerial observation missions and that there were already additional troops deployed in the occupied West Bank, where the fugitives are coming from and where they are. could have escaped.

It is also believed that they may have fled to Jordan, whose border is close to the prison.

“The escape of the six Palestinian prisoners from the Israeli prison in Gilboa this morning is the greatest heroic act that will seriously undermine the Zionist security system and is a blow to the occupation security forces and the entire regime Israeli “the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement in the Gaza Strip said in a statement.

(With information from EFE)

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