Nearly 500 inmates of Kandahar prison disappear down 1,000ft tunnel – just in time for 'fighting season'
Afghan and Nato forces have launched a huge operation to try to recapture 475 prisoners, nearly all of them Taliban insurgents, who staged an extraordinary mass prison breakout using a tunnel.
Officials said the inmates had escaped through the tunnel, dug from a house to the wing of the prison where political prisoners are detained in Kandahar. In an email, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the tunnel was 1,050ft (320m) long and had taken five months to construct, "bypassing enemy check-posts and Kandahar-Kabul main highway leading directly to the political prison."
He said just three insurgents inside the prison had known about the plot. They helped ferry the prisoners out of the jail in an operation lasting four and a half hours.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/taliban-tunnel-jail-afghan-kandahar
