Hundreds of Taleban on the run after suicide-bomb jailbreak

Published on Saturday 14 June 2008 00:54

TALEBAN militants stormed a prison in Afghanistan last night, blowing open its main gates with a car bomb and freeing more than 1,000 inmates.

Several suicide bombers, dozens of fighters on motorbikes and a number of rockets were also used in the carefully orchestrated operation at the jail in Kandahar.

Under cover of darkness, most of the 1,150 prisoners, including some 400 Taleban inmates, are believed to have fled.

Some prisoners are believed to have been killed in the crossfire of a gun battle between police and the insurgents who managed to get inside the jail.

An unknown number of prison guards were also killed.

A state of emergency has now been declared in Kandahar city. Police and troops were on the streets and all residents were ordered to remain in their homes.

Officials said the attack, which lasted 30 minutes, began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the prison's main gate.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison and around 50 fighters stormed inside. One shopkeeper selling vegetables near the prison said he saw prisoners escape after the attack and run toward pomegranate and grape groves lying behind the complex.

Abdul Quadir, the prison director, said: "They (the Taleban] used a truck to blow the gate open and all of the guards at the gate have been killed and are under rubble."

Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai and the president of Kandahar's provincial council, confirmed: "All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left."

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taleban, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison. He claimed that the attack had been planned for the last two month, "to release our Taleban friends".

"Today we succeeded," he said, adding that the escaped prisoners "are safe in town and they are going to their homes".

The prison holds common criminals but also Taleban militants fighting Nato troops and the Afghan government.

Officials with Nato's International Security Assistance Force said they were aware of the attack but had no details.

Last month, some 350 Taleban suspects held at the Kandahar prison ended a week-long hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised their cases would be reviewed.

Some of the hunger strikers are believed to have been held without trial for more than two years. Others received lengthy sentences after short trials.

Kandahar – the Taleban's former stronghold and Afghanistan's second-largest city – has been the scene of fierce battles between Nato forces and insurgent fighters over the last two years.

The US military has handed over an unspecified number of suspected Taleban fighters to Afghan custody under a programme agreed last year to transfer all Afghan prisoners from American detention.

US troops have arrested thousands of suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda militants since invading Afghanistan in 2001, when they helped to topple the Taleban government.

The prison attack came the day after Afghanistan was promised more than 7 billion in aid.