2 dozen Iranians escape south Iraq jail

Two dozen Iranians jailed in a southern Iraqi police station for illegally entering the country escaped over the weekend, but most have since been recaptured, the provincial police commander said Monday.

The Iranians, believed to be Shiites who slipped into the country to make pilgrimages to shrines in Iraq's south, broke out on Saturday in a village about 12 miles from the Iranian border, Brig. Hussein Abdul Hadi Mahbub said.

Mahbub blamed "negligence by the guards" for the escape.

After the escape, police imposed a curfew in the desert village of Badra. Twenty of the escapees were recaptured, and police are hunting for the remaining four, said Mahbub, police commander for the southern city of Wasit.

Iranians frequently filter across the porous, poorly patrolled border into Iraq's southern Shiite heartland, most of them to visit Shiite holy sites in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, or because of business or family ties.

The United States accuses Iran's Revolutionary Guards of sending operatives to organize Shiite militants into cells and arm them for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops, a claim Iran denies.