10 Prisoners Break Central Jail in N Yemen

As many as 10 prisoners on Friday escaped from the central prison of northern Amran province, after they bribed some of the prison guards, a provincial security official told Xinhua.

"Seven of the group were captured then while the rest, including a killer of the Yemeni Jewish citizen, were still at large," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"A security campaign was underway to search for the three fugitives as security authorities are investigating the circumstances of the breakout," the official said, adding that "no prison guard was killed when the prison break occurred, but investigators found out that some of them took bribe."

The 40-year-old Abdul Aziz al-Obeidi was sentenced death penalty by Yemen's Supreme Court on July 24, 2010, after convicted of deliberately murdering the Yemeni Jewish citizen Masha Yaish Nahari in 2008 in Raydah town of Amran province, some 60 km north of the capital Sanaa.

Jewish citizens in Yemen numbered some 400 in 2009. Among them, about 250 dwell in the northern province of Amran, according to government statistics.

Yemen has witnessed weeks-long anti-government protests demanding an immediate end to the 33-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The political crisis recently resulted in deterioration of security stability after the government pulled the police out from some towns of major provinces under pretext of avoiding friction with protesters.