NARATHIWAT - Police are hunting the remaining four of the 16 young men escaping on Sunday from the Juvenile Observation and Protection Centre in this southern province.
After being alerted of the jailbreak, police and the soldiers sealed off the facility and monitored all routes in a two-kilometre radius to the facility, located in the government centre in Muang municipality.
The officials first found three youths in the swamp forests surrounding the area. The young men, wearing only black shorts, later confessed that they had escaped from the centre. Later, they detained another nine. They were all sent back to the centre.
The authorities have contacted the relatives of the remaining four teenagers still at large to help persuade them to turn themselves in.
They suspected some in the group had persuaded the others to join them in the escape from the detention centre. More investigation will be conducted later.