Daring jailbreak keeps Japan on the edge

Tokyo: The daring jailbreak of a dangerous criminal wearing only his prison-issued underwear has sparked an intense manhunt in a southern Japanese city and prompted schools to advise children to travel in supervised groups until he is caught.

Nearly 800 police officers have been assigned to the hunt for the convict, Li Guolin, a Chinese national who had been jailed for shooting at an officer and stealing a squad car in 2005, according to the Hiroshima Prefectural Police. Officers yesterday scoured train stations, bus depots and parks across Hiroshima city. Police also distributed the convict's mugshot door-to-door and posted his description on the internet.

The escape on Wednesday was the first ever from the Hiroshima prison, said a penitentiary official who spoke on condition on anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. Tadaaki Nakagawa, a corrections official with the Justice Ministry, said the last escape by an inmate from within a Japanese prison was in 1989.