Pakistan authorities in north-western province fear jailbreak

ISLAMABAD: Authorities in Pakistan have issued an alert about major jailbreak attempts in the Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to lift the moratorium on death penalties in terrorism cases.

The alert was issued to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provincial government yesterday by Inspector General of Prisons (IG).

"The militants may storm jails to free high-profile prisoners before execution," the letter by the Inspector General warns, adding that while some militants are kept in Haripur and Peshawar jails, many high-profile militants were lodged in jails of Kohat, Timergara, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Manshera.

The IG further requested the KP government to issue a security alert to law enforcement agencies to ensure fool- proof security arrangements of all jails in the province, the Dawn reported.

Last year in July, dozens of heavily-armed Taliban insurgents had freed nearly 175 inmates, including 35 'high-profile militants', during a brazen attack on the central jail in Dera Ismail Khan.

In April 2012, over 100 militants had stormed into the central prison of Bannu and freed 384 prisoners.

Earlier yesterday, Pakistan lifted a self-imposed moratorium on death penalty in terror related cases, a day after ruthless Taliban militants massacred at least 148 people, mostly children, in an army-run school in Peshawar, the administrative capital of the KP province.

The outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying, it was in revenge for a ferocious army offensive - Zarb-e-Azb - that has been underway in the tribal areas since the summer and has left an estimated 1,200 militants dead and tens of thousands of people displaced.

"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain," Taliban spokesman Mohammed Umar Khurasani has said, claiming responsibility for the attack.