Kandahar jailbreak 'Taliban collusion' dismays locals
"It was a Taliban prison, not an Afghan government prison," said one Afghan official while briefing senior Afghan and US officials.
The official said four Taliban commanders, led by Ahmad Shah, were representing 488 insurgents lodged in the Sarposa jail on the outskirts of Kandahar.
Shah and the other men had keys to the all the cells, he added.
An embarrassed Afghan government has detained the director of the prison, Gen Ghulam Dastagir Mayar, and seven other officials.
Mr Mayar looked tense and puzzled, handcuffed in a room at Kandahar police headquarters.
I got a glimpse of him before I was asked by Afghan police to leave the building.
Mr Mayar and others will have to answer many questions in Kabul.
'These things happen'Security officials told the BBC that guards and police sold the imprisoned Taliban mobile phones, allowing them to communicate with their comrades for weeks, perhaps months, before they launched their audacious escape.
Intelligence was passed to the prison directorate by Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
NDS officers said they had warned the prison directorate to step up security because they believed the Taliban were planning to attack the facility. But the intelligence was not acted on, the officers added.
The governor of Kandahar province, Tooryalai Wesa, told the BBC he did not know if there had been any specific warnings from the NDS.
"I didn't see something like that. The reports were different. The reports were vague. There was no report about digging a tunnel in Kandahar."
But he admitted there had been "some shortcomings on our side".
"These things happen - we have examples from other countries," he added. "But these people cannot run. We have all their data, and it has been passed onto neighbouring countries, districts and provinces."
Locals wondered how guards posted at the prison's observation towers had not spotted anythingKandahar's acting police chief, Sher Shah Yousafzai, told the BBC that his force had lost dozens of officers, including his predecessor Khan Mohammad Mujahid fighting the Taliban. Mr Mujahid was killed in a suicide attack on his compound on 15 April.
"It is a waste of our blood, money and time. This will have an impact on security in the city and province. The police are now working round the clock to arrest them all."
But many people in Kandahar are asking how police at the checkpoint at the top of the mountain of Cheel Zeena, or 40 Stairs, which overlooks the house where the tunnel was dug, as well as the prison, did not notice the Taliban operation.
Guards posted at two of the prison's observation towers also failed to do their job, said Haji Mohamamd Khan, a local resident.
But Haji Shookoar, who lives next to the house rented by the Taliban, joked that they might have moved 50 to 60 trucks of soil into Sarpoza prison during the night, adding: "There is no government here and everyone is acting like a ruler."
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