Hunt on for 1 100 prisoners
2008-06-14 14:13
Kandahar - A desperate hunt was under way on Saturday for more than 1 100 prisoners who escaped a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open, killing 15 guards, officials said.
The prisoners, some of them Taliban militants, fled when the rebels attacked the facility in the city of Kandahar late on Friday, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards.
The Nato force in Afghanistan said more than 1 100 prisoners were on the loose after what deputy justice minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai called the rebels' most sophisticated attack yet.
"A massive operation is under way to find the escaped inmates. The Afghan security forces are searching for them within the city and along the main and secondary roads," Hashimzai told AFP in the capital, Kabul. None has yet been caught, he added.
An AFP reporter based in the southern city said large numbers of security forces including those of the US-trained Afghan national army had been deployed to search vehicles.
Taliban prisoners freed
A Taliban spokesperson, Yousuf Ahmadi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said the rebels used suicide bombs and detonated a bomb-laden water tanker in the attack.
"First we exploded two suicide attacks and then our mujahedin (holy warriors) riding motorcycles entered the prison and killed the remaining security guards.
"We successfully freed all prisoners, including our jailed Taliban and other prisoners," he told AFP.
Authorities had so far recovered the bodies of at least 15 security guards, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and a brother of President Hamid Karzai told AFP.
"We've discovered the bodies of 15 security guards who were killed in the attack. The casualties might be more," Karzai added.
"Several hundred prisoners including Taliban have escaped," he said, without giving a precise figure.
The Taliban have been battling Hamid Karzai's government since they were toppled from power in a US-led operation for failing to hand over al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2001.
- AFP