Huge police search for Albanian prison fugitives

A large police operation was under way on Friday in the northern region of Epirus, northern Greece, bolstered by members of the force’s elite EKAM squad in bid to find six out of a group of 11 Albanian prisoners that escaped from Trikala’s prison in March and have been linked to at least two killings, of a police officer and a female motorist.

On Thursday, police found two cars that were used by some of the Albanian convicts near a village in Evrytania, central Greece. One was a patrol car that had been taken after a group of convicts shot dead a 37-year-old police officer at a road block in Distomo on June 16. The other vehicle had been stolen from a village in central Greece. Both cars were found in ditches near the village of Perithiotissa and had been covered with foliage.

Police shot dead two men near the town of Koniska on Tuesday as they tried to apprehend some of the fugitives. The escaped inmate killed was named as 27-year-old Edison Lika, while the other man shot by police was identified as the fugitive’s uncle.