Five of the 13 drug suspects who escaped from the detention facility of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency over the weekend have surrendered, the drug agency said on Monday.
The PDEA said the five inmates surrendered in Balagtas town in Bulacan.
It did not provide other details and asked that the names of the inmates who surrendered be withheld in the meantime.
Manhunt operations for the remaining eight escapees are still ongoing.
Derrick Arnold Carreon said 13 drug suspects escaped from their detention cell inside a police camp in San Fernando City early Sunday.
The 13 slipped out of the jail in a police camp in San Fernando city north of Manila before dawn, said Carreon.
“They sawed through the bars of the metal grille,” he told AFP, adding an investigation was under way to find out how they got the saw.
The Philippines has frequently suffered mass escapes from prisons which are usually overcrowded, poorly maintained and inadequately guarded.
In the country’s biggest jailbreak, more than 150 inmates ecaped a prison in the southern Philippines in January after about a hundred gunmen stormed the facility.
In August 2016 members of a Muslim extremist group that pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group stormed a jail in the south and broke out 23 inmates.
(with a report from Agence France Presse)