Karachi tunnel jailbreak bid foiled

KARACHI, Oct 13 (AFP): Pakistani officials said Monday they had thwarted an Islamist group's bid to tunnel into Karachi's main prison and stage a jailbreak that could have freed 100 dangerous militants.

The government paramilitary Rangers raided a house where members of a militant group were trying to tunnel into the nearby Karachi Central Jail, Rangers Colonel Tahir Mehmood told a press conference.

Breakouts from Pakistan's ageing, overcrowded prisons are not uncommon. A raid by heavily armed militants on a jail in the northwest last August freed nearly 250 prisoners, while almost 400 fled in a similar incident in another northwestern prison in 2012.