(14 Jun 2008) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of jail
2. Damage
3. Afghan National Army soldiers and police at jail entrance
4. Look-out post, with troops and damage
5. Shopkeeper clearing up nearby
6. Security
7. Wide of prison
8. Drive by shot of the damaged area
STORYLINE
More than 600 prisoners escaped during a daring Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and destroyed a two-storey police checkpoint, a police official said Saturday.
At least nine police were killed, he added.
The assault, at Kandahar, Afghanistan's second biggest city, included a truck bomb at the main gate, a suicide bomber who struck a back wall and rockets fired from outside, setting off a series of explosions.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked Sarposa Prison and freed about 400 Taliban members.
A senior police official said more than 600 prisoners escaped and eight died in the attack.
More than 30 nearby shops were damaged.
Kandahar was once the Taliban's stronghold and its province has been the scene of fierce fighting during the past two years between insurgents and NATO troops, primarily from Canada and the US.
The prison attack came just a few hours after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told his counterparts in Europe that NATO members needed to bolster their military effort in Afghanistan, where violence has been escalating.
The attack reportedly began with a tanker truck full of explosives which detonated at the prison's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post, killing all the officers inside.
Shortly afterwards, a suicide bomber on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison and witnesses said rockets were also fired at the prison during a 30-minute battle.
Last month, some 200 Taliban suspects at the prison ended a week-long hunger strike after a parliamentary delegation promised that their cases would be reviewed.
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