Mauritania prisoners tunnel their way to freedom

NOUAKCHOTT, Feb 24 (Reuters) Thirty-six prisoners in a jail in Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, have escaped through a four-metre tunnel dug under the compound's walls, a senior judicial official in the West African state said today.

The detainees made their dawn escape from the central prison into a sandy courtyard between the police headquarters and a main mosque, public prosecutor Ahmed Ould Abdellahi said.

''Of the 36 who escaped, 12 have been re-arrested,'' Ould Abdellahi told Reuters.

It is not the first time prisoners have broken out of Nouakchott's central prison.

Three suspected members of an Islamic fundamentalist group linked to al Qaeda, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, are still at large after escaping last April.

The latest escapees posed no major security threat, being common criminals, Ould Abdellahi said.

REUTERS MS BD1922