Scores of prisoners escape in Islamic State attack on Afghan jail
Jalalabad/Kabul: An attack claimed by Islamic State on a jail compound in the Afghan city of Jalalabad killed at least three people and injured dozens, triggering heavy fighting in which scores of prisoners escaped, an official said.
Sohrab Qaderi, a provincial council member, said a huge car bomb explosion was followed by at least two smaller blasts outside the government-run prison, and that police then fought attackers who had taken up positions nearby.
A wounded man receives treatment at a hospital after a suicide car bomb and attack by multiple gunmen in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, on Sunday.Credit:AP
Islamic State's Amaq news agency quoted a military source as saying its fighters had carried out Sunday's attack but gave no further details. There was no independent confirmation that the militant group was responsible.
"At least three people were dead and 25 were injured in the ongoing clashes," Qaderi said. More than 50 prisoner escaped, and the death toll could rise, he added.
The assault happened on the third and final day of a ceasefire between the Afghan government and the Taliban, when hundreds of Taliban prisoners were released in an attempt to make a final push for intra-Afghan peace talks.
The Taliban was not responsible for the attack, a spokesman for the Islamist group said.
President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban have both indicated that long-delayed negotiations could begin immediately after the Eid al-Adha festival, which took place in Kabul on Thursday.
The Taliban says it has freed all 1000 Afghan prisoners it had pledged to release in a deal with the United States.
The complex nature of the attack mirrors past Taliban assaults on other prisons in Afghanistan. In 2015, a Taliban raid on a prison in Ghazni freed more than 350 prisoners. It, too, was led with a car bomb that breached the complex's perimeter before gunmen stormed the buildings.
Islamic State has been increasingly recruiting from within the most extreme ranks of Taliban fighters. Afghanistan's Islamic State offshoot has claimed responsibility for a number of recent Kabul attacks in which gunmen stormed buildings and held off security forces for hours, but none as complex as Sunday's prison raid.
Jalalabad's central prison holds Islamic State-linked fighters as well as those linked to the Taliban, but the most senior fighters from both groups are held in prisons in Kabul.
Reuters, Washington Post