Hundreds of prisoners escaped from a jail in southern Afghanistan on Friday after Taliban fighters blew off the gates in a suicide attack that killed several police officers, according to a U.S. military official. Many of those freed were apparently Taliban suspects.
The attack occurred in the evening in the southern city of Kandahar, a longtime stronghold of the Taliban insurgency, when attackers drove an explosives-laden vehicle toward the city jail, according to a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Prisoners breached the walls of the prison when a barrage of rocket and gunfire followed the initial attack.
Officials said that as many as 1,000 prisoners had been housed at the facility. Wali Karzai, president of Kandahar's provincial council, told the Associated Press that about 350 of the prisoners were suspected Taliban fighters.
Last month, about 200 Taliban suspects held at the prison ended a week-long hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised their cases would be reviewed, the AP said. Some of the protesting prisoners had sewn their mouths shut.
Now that's a serious protest!
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