Oh dear. Massive Taliban jail break in Kandahar – 400 or so rebel prisoners sprung with 400 or so others. What worries me, though, is that the attack seems to have been very much like the 2005 NOIA raid on Abu Ghraibh.
Prison staff said the assault began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the Sarposa compound’s main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post and killing the officers inside. A short time later, a suicide bomber travelling on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison, and claimed militants had been planning the assault for two months. “Today, we succeeded,” he said, adding that the escaped prisoners were “going to their homes”.
Mohammad Hiqmatullah, a shopkeeper who sells vegetables near the jail, said he saw fleeing prisoners disappear into nearby pomegranate and grape groves. Witnesses said rockets were fired at the prison during the 30-minute battle. A local politician said 15 policemen were killed in the storming of the prison and subsequent clashes.
So, a multiple VBIED attack to breach the walls, RPGs for the guard towers, then the assault, and finally an orderly break-contact – you didn’t see any mention of Taliban casualties or prisoners, did you? Just like that, with the difference that this time, the car bombs reached the wall. The motorbikes are a distinctive local touch, I think. Ungood.