BEIRUT, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-six prisoners escaped from a Lebanese jail at dawn on Monday, with eight of them rearrested later in the day, local media reported.
Most of the escapees from Jib Jenin prison in the western Bekaa region were held on charges of trafficking drugs and weapons, according to a National News Agency report.
The prisoners escaped through a ventilation opening, before the security forces captured one of the escapees in the morning and seven more in the afternoon, the L'Orient Today news website reported.
The past months have witnessed a spate of prison escapes in Lebanon when the value of law enforcement officers' salaries have been dramatically eroded by the depreciation of the national currency amid steep economic crisis, which has plunged about 80 percent of the population into poverty.
