Two men serving time for armed robbery escaped from a jail in the southern Argentine province of Neuquen where a personnel shortage prompted administrators to dress up a doll as a guard and put it in a watchtower.

The convicts escaped last Saturday night from UP 12 prison after climbing one of its barbed-wire-clad walls under the impassive gaze of "Wilson", a doll holding down the post of a watchman, guards told Rio Negro newspaper.