| Follow-up. |
An investigation has been launched to find out whether any government officials were involved in the commando-style attack by several dozen Taliban fighters.
| Oh, you think ... |
The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among the 870 inmates who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.
| I wouldn't be too eager to take those 390 prisoner again ... |
Prison staff said the assault began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the Sarposa compound's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post and killing the officers inside. A short time later, a suicide bomber travelling on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison, and claimed militants had been planning the assault for two months. "Today, we succeeded," he said, adding that the escaped prisoners were "going to their homes".
| Funny how we never quite figure out which phone booth Qari is using ... |
Today, security forces were checking vehicles and motorcyclists on key roads in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. Some houses were searched where authorities suspected some escapees had hidden, residents said. Nato-led troops were supporting the Afghan security forces in cordoning off the area in the hunt for the prison inmates, said an alliance spokesman in Kabul.
Dozens of police and army soldiers were deployed outside the badly damaged prison. A pile of rubble lay where two towers of the jail had collapsed.
Wali Karzai, the president of Kandahar's provincial council and the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the prison held about 350 suspected Taliban fighters. "There is no one left," he said.