Kandahar, June 14
A desperate hunt was under way for more than 1,100 prisoners who escaped from a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open killing 15 guards today
officials said.
The prisoners, some of them Taliban militants, fled when the rebels attacked the facility in the city of Kandahar yesterday, 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.
Despite the presence of about 70,000 international troops mainly operating under NATO, the insurgency aimed at toppling the US-backed government in Kabul has gained pace in the past two years.
— AFP
