Source:
Mercury NewsKANDAHAR, Afghanistan --
Taliban leaders carried out an audacious plot Monday to free nearly 500 fighters from southern Afghanistan's largest prison, leading them through a tunnel dug over more than five months and equipped with electricity and air pipes, which suggested that the insurgents remain formidable and wily opponents despite recent setbacks.The plan was so closely held that one young Taliban fighter who got out said he knew nothing of it until a fellow inmate tugged his sleeve to wake him in the night and led him to the 3-foot-wide tunnel, which ran more than half a mile from a hole in a cell's floor, under security posts, tall concrete walls and a highway, and came up in a nearby house. From there, a waiting car took the fighter a few miles away, where he hailed a taxi to safety.
"I was just praying to God that he would free me," said the fighter, Allah Mohammed Agha, 22, recounting his escape from Sarposa Prison, where he had been held for 28 days. "Last night was the night that my dream was made true."
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The Afghan government called the breach a disaster. The prison break called into question the extent of the gains made against the Taliban in 18 months of hard fighting in Kandahar province, and whether any progress will be sustainable once NATO troops begin to reduce their numbers as planned this summer, members of Parliament, tribal leaders and Western officials said in interviews. more:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_17926034?source=rss&nclick_check=1
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