KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S. and NATO troops aided Afghan forces with reconnaissance in a hunt Saturday for 870 inmates who escaped from prison after a Taliban assault that NATO conceded was a success for the militants.
A roadside bomb, meanwhile, killed four U.S. Marines sent to southwestern Afghanistan to help train the country’s fledgling police. It was the deadliest attack on American forces this year in Afghanistan and came one day after the U.S. defense secretary highlighted the fact that more American and allied troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq last month.
Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister, Munid Mangal, said about 1,000 prisoners were housed in Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison when dozens of militants on motorbikes attacked the facility late Friday. Seven police officers and several prisoners died in the assault, he said.
The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among the 870 inmates who escaped.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force first said Saturday that 1,100 prisoners had escaped but later revised the figure to about 900.
The NATO force’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco, conceded that the militants pulled off a “very successful operation.”
“We admit it,” Branco said. “Their guys did the job properly in that sense, but it does not have a strategic impact.”
NATO was providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to help track fleeing militants, Branco said.
