Kandahar prison, Afghanistan Almost 500 Taliban prisoners escaped through a tunnel in an audacious overnight jailbreak in south Afghanistan which the president's office on Monday

called a security "disaster" The Taliban said it was behind the operation to free the prisoners using a massive underground tunnel in its heartland of southern Kandahar, and claimed that all of those who escaped were its members, many of them senior commanders. The daring breakout, the second from the prison in three years, threatens to undermine recent security gains claimed by foreign forces after a US troop surge, with the newly-freed insurgents once again available to wreak havoc. It is also an embarrassment for Afghan forces who are due to take increasing responsibility for security ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014. "A tunnel hundreds of metres long was dug from the south of the prison into the prison, and 476 political prisoners escaped last night," prison director General Ghulam Dastageer Mayar said.

The escapees, who represent over a third of the prison's total population, came from its political section, he said, adding that the prison is the largest in southern Afghanistan. Confirming the breakout, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer described it as a "disaster" at a press conference in Kabul. "This is a blow, it's something that should not have happened," he said."We're looking into finding out what exactly happened and what's being done to compensate for the disaster that happened in Kandahar."

Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the militia was responsible for the mass breakout, claiming that more than 500 prisoners had escaped -- 106 of whom were commanders -- during an operation lasting several hours.
A separate statement from the militants said they had started digging the 360-metre-long tunnel 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 centres and there was no fighting."

The Taliban are known to exaggerate their claims but the governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, told a press conference all but one of the prisoners belonged to the Taliban. Some of the escaped prisoners have been recaptured by security forces who are still hunting the remaining escapees, Wesa said. He added that intelligence cells and security forces at the prison had "failed in their duties" but that the authorities had biometric data from all those who escaped.

Foreign forces say they made significant gains in the Kandahar area during 2010 amid an American initiative announced the previous year under which soldiers focused on the south. But the jailbreak could give a fresh injection of commanders and fighters to the Taliban.

Kandahar is seen as the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and the city and its surrounding area is the scene of some of Afghanistan's worst fighting. In 2008, around 1,000 prisoners including members of the Taliban escaped from the same jail after the militants used a truck bomb to blow open the gates. Ten days ago the city's police chief was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber dressed in police uniform, dealing a serious blow to security in the province.

The jailbreak is the second major security breach in Afghanistan in a week -- last Monday, three soldiers died when an attacker dressed in a military uniform got inside the defence ministry in Kabul. 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.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 are due to start in July ahead of the planned end of foreign combat operations in 2014. But senior US officials increasingly stress 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.