The Maling compulsory rehabilitation center. [File photo]

Four of 19 drug addicts who escaped from a compulsory rehabilitation center in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are still at large, local police said on Tuesday.

The 19 escaped from the Maling compulsory rehabilitation center on Friday afternoon, said an officer with the Hengxian County Public Security Bureau, who declined to give his name.

Watchmen at the center, which had taken in about 100 drug addicts, found at 5 p.m. Friday that some had escaped by climbing out of a toilet window and then clambering over the barrier wall.

Policemen caught one addict not far from the wall. The police seized 15 and are looking for the other four.

(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2009)