Around 500 Taliban Flee in Daring Afghan Jailbreak

Almost 500 Taliban prisoners escaped from an Afghan prison overnight after their comrades had spent months digging a massive underground tunnel in an audacious jailbreak, officials said Monday.

The Taliban said it was behind the operation in Kandahar, the militant Islamist organization’s heartland in the south of the country, and that all of those who escaped were its members, many of them senior commanders.

It was the second high-profile escape from the prison in three years and will be seen as proof of the country's chaotic justice system as well as being an embarrassment to local security forces, ahead of an international pullout.

"A tunnel hundreds of meters long was dug from the south of the prison into the prison and 476 political prisoners escaped last night," said prison director General Ghulam Dastageer Mayar.

The escapees came from the political section of the prison, he added.

Kandahar's acting police chief Shair Shah Yousufzai confirmed the escape.

Taliban spokesman Youssef Ahmadi said the militant Islamists were responsible for the mass break-out, claiming that more than 500 prisoners had escaped -- 106 of whom were commanders -- during an operation that lasted several hours.

The Taliban are known to exaggerate their claims but a separate statement from the militants said they started digging the 360-metre-long tunnel to the prison five months ago and that it passed under several government checkpoints.

"They started getting out of the prison at 11:00 pm (1830 GMT) last night and by early morning today, 541 prisoners escaped the prison," Ahmadi said.

"They all have made it safe to our centers and there was no fighting."

In 2008, around 1,000 prisoners including members of the Taliban escaped after the militants used a truck bomb to blow open the gates.

A statement from the Kandahar provincial governor's office insisted that "a number" of the prisoners had since been recaptured. It did not give precise figures, but said a search was under way for the rest of the escapees.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said international troops were on standby to provide assistance.

"We have no involvement at this point," said ISAF spokesman Major Michael Johnson in Kabul. "If we're asked to assist in any capacity, we would certainly be standing by to do that."

Kandahar is seen as the birthplace of the Taliban movement and the city and surrounding area is the scene of some of the worst fighting in Afghanistan.

The city's police chief was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber dressed in police uniform 10 days ago, dealing a serious blow to security in the province.

Western analysts say Afghanistan's prison and justice system is riddled with corruption.

In a report last November, the International Crisis Group said the Afghan justice system was "in a catastrophic state of disrepair" and that most Afghans thought justice institutions were the most corrupt in the country.

It said that unsanitary conditions and overcrowding meant that its prisons were "a breeding ground for the insurgency."

There are around 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them from the United States, battling the Taliban and other insurgents.

Limited withdrawals from seven relatively peaceful areas, only one of which is in southern Afghanistan, are due to start in July ahead of the planned end of foreign combat operations in 2014.

But senior U.S. officials are increasingly stressing the importance of longer-term relations between the United States and Afghanistan, while warning that the Taliban could still launch some of its worst attacks.