Earthquake leads to mass escape from Pakistan prison
More than 200 inmates have escaped from a prison in Pakistan after they were moved from their cells for safety amid earthquake tremors, officials have said.
Several dozen of the prisoners that broke out of the jail in Karachi were quickly recaptured, police said on Tuesday, but at least 130 are understood to remain unaccounted for. Authorities added that raids are under way to apprehend those still at large.
Of the 216 prisoners who had fled from Malir prison during the night, 78 had been recaptured, Kashif Abbasi, a senior police official, told the AP news agency. He stressed that none of the escaped prisoners were convicted fighters.
Escapes are not common from Pakistani jails, which have stepped up security measures since an attack on a prison by the Pakistani Taliban in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, which freed hundreds of inmates.
One prisoner was killed and three security officials were wounded in a shootout that developed amid a bid to put one of the escapees back into custody.
Zia-ul-Hassan Lanjar, home minister for Sindh province, said the jailbreak happened while prisoners were removed from their cells for safety during the tremors. Once outside their cells, a group of inmates attacked guards, seized their weapons and opened fire.
In comments carried live on local TV news channels, Lanjar said the prison break was one of the largest ever in Pakistan, the Reuters news agency reported.
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'Patriarchy feels most threatened when women & gender minorities claim voice and visibility in public by challenging the stand pat norms. In response, it turns to violence the ultimate tool to silence, control, and erase. 'This is exactly what happened to Sana who was killed inside her own home by a violent man who couldn't take no for an answer. This wasn't a random hit, this was a planned attack where a minor girl's privacy and home were invaded by a man who thought he would get away with it.' This is exactly what happened to Sana who was killed inside her own home by a violent man who couldn't take no for an answer. This wasn't a random hit, this was a planned attack where a minor girl's privacy and home were invaded by a man who thought he would get away with it. — Aurat March – عورت مارچ (@AuratMarchKHI) June 3, 2025Actor Mahira Khan also posted a story on Instagram, sharing the news of Yousaf's murder. 'Disgusted to the core,' Khan wrote in the caption. In recent years, several incidents have occurred involving young women being subject to violent crimes at the hands of men they know. Many of these women also had a social media presence on platforms such as TikTok. 'Sana Yousaf's murder is part of a horrifying, ongoing pattern of violence against women in Pakistan, especially those who dare to exist with autonomy,' Nighat Dad, the executive director of a nongovernmental, research-based advocacy organisation, Digital Rights Foundation, told Al Jazeera. 'These are not isolated incidents. What connects them is a culture where women are punished for visibility, independence, and saying no. 'At the heart of this pattern is fragile masculinity and deeply rooted misogyny. When young women assert boundaries or say no to romantic or sexual advances, it bruises the male ego, especially in a society that teaches men entitlement over women's bodies and choices. This entitlement, when left unchecked by law, culture, and platforms, turns deadly,' Dad added. On January 28, a man named Anwar ul-Haq was charged with murder after he confessed to shooting his 14-year-old daughter Hira Anwar in Quetta, a city in Pakistan's southwest. The man, who had recently moved his family back to Pakistan from the US, told the police he found TikTok videos made by his daughter 'objectionable'. His daughter had been posting videos to the social platform before she had moved to Pakistan with her family. In October 2024, police in Pakistan's southern city Karachi said they had arrested a man for killing four members of his family. The four women, aged 60, 21, 20, 20 and 12 were found with slit throats in separate rooms of their apartment, according to the police. In 2022, Pakistani American woman Sania Khan was 29 when she was shot and killed by her former husband, Raheel Ahmad, in Chicago after she had posted about her divorce on her TikTok account. When the police arrived, Ahmad, 36 at the time, shot himself with the gun he used to kill Khan. Possibly the most high-profile murder case of a Pakistani woman took place in 2016, when social media star Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother when she was 26 years old. 'Women who are visible online, particularly those who challenge social norms or exist outside the mold of respectability politics, face disproportionate abuse and threats,' Dad said. 'The backlash isn't just digital, it's physical. When platforms fail to act against hate and harassment, they enable a culture where violence becomes the consequence of women simply being seen and heard.' In all, 346 women in Pakistan were killed in 2024 in the name of 'honour', up from 324 in 2023, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). But this statistic likely does not include cases like Yousaf's, where the accused man is not from the victim's family and committed murder after his advances were rejected. In July 2021, 27-year-old Noor Mukadam was killed in Islamabad by Zahir Jaffar, whose family was known to Mukadam's. In 2022, a judge sentenced Jaffar to death for the rape, murder and beheading of Mukadam. Last week, Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld Jaffar's death penalty. 'We need systemic change. The state must treat online misogyny and gender-based violence as connected threats and not separate issues,' Dad said. 'When a woman says no, and a man responds with violence, that's not heartbreak, it's abuse.'
