By Ismail Sameem
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents blewopen the gate of a main prison in the Afghan city of Kandaharon Friday, allowing hundreds of prisoners including suspectedmilitants to escape, officials said.
Under cover of darkness, nearly all of an estimated 1,150prisoners, including some 400 Taliban inmates, fled from thejail, two officials in the southern city of Kandahar toldReuters on condition of anonymity.
Another official said between 750 and 800 prisoners hadmanaged to escape, adding some prisoners were killed in a gunbattle between police and Taliban fighters inside the jail.
"I think scores of others are caught up inside," he said,adding he suspected the gate was blown up by a suicide bomberdriving a truck. Several Taliban fighters entered the prisonand started freeing the inmates, he said.
The blast caused an unknown number of casualties among theguards, prison director Abdul Qadir told Reuters.
"They (Taliban) used a truck to blow the gate open and allof the guards (at the gate) have been killed and are underrubble," he said by telephone. As he spoke, bursts of gunfirecould be heard in the background.
The two officials who declined to be named said the Talibanfired several rockets at various parts of the mud-built prison.The province is a stronghold of the ousted Taliban movement.
Hours after the attack, several rockets hit a base used byforeign troops in another part of the city, an official andseveral residents said. Sirens were heard from inside the base,they added, but no further details were immediately available.
The U.S. military has handed over an unspecified number ofsuspected Taliban fighters to Afghan custody under a programmeagreed last year to transfer all Afghan prisoners from U.S.detention.
The U.S. military has arrested thousands of suspectedTaliban and al Qaeda militants since invading Afghanistan in2001 to help topple the Taliban government.
Last month, scores of Taliban prisoners in Kandahar's jailresorted to several days of hunger strike, mostly complainingof being badly treated.
The number of Al Qaeda-backed Taliban attacks has increasedsince 2006 and the prison raid ranks among one of the biggest.
The militants tried to assassinate President Hamid Karzaiin April when he was attending a military parade near thepresidential palace in Kabul. They are mostly active insouthern and eastern areas near the border with Pakistan.
Friday's attack came a day after international donors inParis pledged more than $20 billion for Afghanistan'sdevelopment and security projects.
The resurgence of Taliban comes despite the presence ofmore than 60,000 foreign troops under the command of NATO andthe U.S. military as well as the over 150,000 governmentforces.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Afghan; Writing by SayedSalahuddin; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)
