Migrants on run after jail escape

More than a dozen asylum seekers were still on the run today after escaping from a detention centre, police said.

Twenty men made off after scaling a fence at the centre in Lindholme, near Thorne, South Yorkshire, at about 8.20pm yesterday, but six were recaptured overnight after being spotted walking along local roads.

Up to 20 police officers used traffic cars, dogs and a helicopter to search
for the group, who are asylum seekers from Iraq, Kosovo, the Ukraine, Macedonia and India.

They were understood to have been waiting for their applications to be processed.

They were dressed in their own clothes and not prison garb, police said.

A group of three men was rearrested at 3am after they were spotted in the village of Auckley, near Doncaster. A further three were detained in Branton at 7pm. The remaining 14 remain on the run.

There have been further sightings in the Blaxton and Dunsville areas of South Yorkshire.

A police spokesman said: "Although not thought to be dangerous, police are
asking the public not to approach them and motorists not to stop if they are flagged down."

The Immigration Removal Centre at Lindholme is next to a Category C prison at Hatfield Woodhouse, and run by the Prison Service. It has 112 beds.

It holds asylum seekers who have overstayed or have failed in their bid to stay in Britain as well as some whose cases have not been determined but are considered at risk of absconding.

Both the centre and the prison are built on an old RAF base and the asylum seekers are housed in two wings converted from the old officer's mess. It has its own education and visits area as well as a gym.

It is self contained and fenced off from the prison, which has been the scene of a series of escapes in the past five years. The centre opened in March 2001.