Hundreds of Taliban use tunnel to bolt Kandahar jail in security ‘disaster’

YAHOONEWS… KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Hundreds of Taliban fighters bolted from prison in a daring escape overnight Sunday, prompting a huge hunt for the fugitives and exposing glaring security gaps in efforts to contain the insurgency.

Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said Monday that a total of 475 political prisoners had escaped, “including one criminal.”

The insurgents had worked for months digging the tunnel they used to get out, Wesa said.

The tunnel was started in a house located to the north-east of the Sarpoza prison in the city’s Sarfooza area and continued to the entrance of the prison’s political block about 300 metres away.

“Some of the escaped prisoners have been recaptured by the security forces,” Wesa said.

“Huge operations have been launched inside and on the outskirts of Kandahar city for the rest of them.”

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qarii Yousaf Ahmadi, claimed that 541 insurgents escaped overnight after tunnelling underground to avoid security checkpoints.

President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer called the incident a “disaster.”

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

“It shows a great vulnerability in the Afghan government.”

The prison supervisor, Ghulam Dastagir Mayar, put the number of escapees at 476, and said many were insurgent militants and commanders.

“They dig earth and made a big hole underground and escaped from there,” he said.

Ahmadi said 106 Taliban commanders were among those who bolted over several hours.

“There were many suicide bombers and fighters with us in case if needed to rescue the Taliban from any kind of government or foreign forces,” Ahmadi said.

“After we took them out from there, we picked them up in our vehicles to send them out of the government-controlled area.”

Canadian authorities said they were keeping an eye on the situation, but added that Kandahar city was no longer their area of responsibility.

The escape is reminiscent of one in 2008, when 900 prisoners broke out of the Sarposa prison following a Taliban attack on the facility, which was under Canada’s oversight at the time.

Canadian correctional services officers spent years training guards at the prison, and security had supposedly been tightened since then.

Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city, has been the focus of much of the international military effort to defeat the insurgency.

Security, however, remains precarious with frequent suicide and other attacks.

American forces, who are responsible for Kandahar city, refused to comment on the prison break.

Authorities had biometric data on all the escapees and Wesa said it would be easy for security forces to identify them, if they are found.

The governor also ripped into security personnel at the prison, saying they had failed in their duties and that investigators were trying to figure out how the great escape occurred.

The area around the jail was cordoned off and journalists were not being allowed into the site.

4 Replies to “Hundreds of Taliban use tunnel to bolt Kandahar jail in security ‘disaster’”

  1. Which proves the case that Taliban Jihadists must be eliminated rather then incarcerated.

  2. DARING escape? ‘DARING’ ? Which abysmal crawling coward decided to insert that word in there? Or was it a muslim by any chance? Infiltrated everywhere.

  3. You got that right Big Frank, and after they are killed they should be buried in a pig skin, if you take away their chance for paradise and the virgins and they aren’t as brave.