NATO: Hundreds escape from Afghan jail

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — More than 400 inmates escaped early Monday from a prison in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, officials said.

The inmates escaped through a nearly 1,050-foot (320 meter) tunnel that Taliban members dug into the prison compound, according to a claim of responsibility by Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed. Digging the tunnel took five months, he said. The escape took four and a half hours.

The Taliban claimed 541 prisoners escaped. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said the number of escaped prisoners was closer to 470.

“We are aware of reports that a tunnel was involved,” NATO said in a statement.

Waheed Omer, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, called the mass escape “bad news and a disaster.”

It was the second such escape from the prison, which houses some of the country’s most dangerous Taliban prisoners, according to CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen.

“It’s, I think, quite a black eye for the U.S. and NATO and the Afghan government, who have put quite a lot of resources into trying to improve the prison systems, and here you have this massive prison break, with sadly, some pretty hardcore Taliban prisoners who escaped,” he said.

In June 2008, up to 1,000 prisoners — almost half of them Taliban members — escaped after militants detonated a truck bomb against the side of the prison compound.

Police launched a wide operation to look for Monday’s escapees and have recaptured eight, the Kandahar governor’s office said.

In the 2008 escape, militants used truck loaded with about two tons of explosives and driven by suicide drivers to blast holes in the mud brick walls of the prison.

A gun and rocket battle followed, lasting several hours and ending with militants rushing into the prison on motorcycles to free prisoners, according to Taliban accounts of the attack.

Nine guards, seven prisoners and one civilian were killed in the attack, according to the provincial government.

Security forces said they tried to track down the escaped prisoners, but said the large Taliban presence in the region and the numerous hideouts located there made it difficult to hunt down militants.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and has been the site of fierce fighting between international forces and insurgents.

It has been the site of numerous anti-Western demonstrations, recently over the burning of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, by a pastor in the United States.

On April 15, the police chief of Kandahar province was killed when a man wearing a military uniform detonated a bomb at the entrance to the police headquarters.

In February, 10 people died when mines exploded at a playground during a picnic hosted by a former police commander. In a separate incident, 19 people, including 15 police officers, died when armed attackers targeted police headquarters.