Al-Qaeda Militants Escape Yemen Prison

Just months after almost 60 suspected al-Qaeda militants escaped from a Yemen jail, another 10 to 15 militants broke out of another Yemen prison early today. The convicts fled through a tunnel as long as 130 feet that took them under the Aden prison and dropped them off outside the walls. A security official tells the AP that a dozen of the escaped men had been convicted of murdering security officials and a bank robbery.

The AP points out that Yemen, which has seen months of unrest in an uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has seen two other "spectacular" jailbreaks, in 2003 and 2006. Investigations into those, and the June escape, have shown that some prison security officers were involved. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, considered by the US to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terrorist network, is based in Yemen. (More al-Qaeda stories.)