Officials at the maximum security Maze prison have discovered an escape tunnel leading from a block housing members of the Irish Republican Army.
No one has escaped through the tunnel at block H-7, one of the blocks that was the scene of a breakout by 38 IRA prisoners in September 1983, a spokesman for Britain's Northern Ireland Office said Monday."All prisoners have been accounted for and further investigations are under way," said the spokesman. He refused further comment.
Press Association, the British news agency, said the tunnel was elaborately constructed and concealed and was discovered Sunday night by a prison officer on a routine patrol.
The Northern Ireland Office said the tunnel did not go anywhere near the perimeter of the jail.
The 1983 breakout was the biggest in British history. Most of the escapees have since been recaptured.
The Maze, near Lisburn, southwest of Belfast, houses some 530 inmates, almost all of them jailed for terrorist offenses. IRA prisoners are strictly segregated from pro-British prisoners.