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April 25th, 2011

Via: AFP:

Almost 500 Taliban fighters and commanders tunnelled out of a prison in an audacious jailbreak in southern Afghanistan which the government admitted on Monday was a security “disaster”.

The Taliban said it was behind the operation to free the inmates through a 360-metre tunnel into Kandahar prison which it been digging for five months. It claimed all those who escaped were Taliban, including over 100 commanders.

The daring breakout in the Taliban’s heartland, the prison’s second in three years, threatens to undermine recent gains claimed by NATO forces in the area after a US-led troop surge, just as the annual fighting season begins.

It is also a major embarrassment for Afghan forces who are due to take on greater responsibility for security in their country ahead of the planned withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

“A tunnel hundreds of metres long was dug from the south of the prison into the prison, and 476 political prisoners escaped last night,” prison director General Ghulam Dastageer Mayar said.

The escapees, who represent over a third of the prison’s total population, came from its political section, he added.

Kandahar prison is the largest in southern Afghanistan and holds Taliban captured on nearby battlefields, which are among the country’s bloodiest.

Confirming the breakout, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer said he believed only 13 of the escapees had been recaptured so far.

“This is a blow, it’s something that should not have happened,” he said.

“We’re looking into finding out what exactly happened and what’s being done to compensate for the disaster that happened in Kandahar.”

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the Islamist militants were responsible for the mass breakout, which took place over several hours.

A separate Taliban statement said they had started digging the tunnel from a nearby safe house five months ago and that it passed under several government checkpoints and a major highway.