KABUL - Fifteen inmates, most of them insurgents, escaped Monday night from the heavily guarded Pul-i-Charkhi prison, east of Kabul, the Taliban claimed on Tuesday.
A Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement said the inmates had escaped from the jail’s sixth bloc. Most of the fleeing prisoners were Taliban who had been sentenced to death and life time imprisonment, he said.

Mujahid’s claim could not be immediately verified, but an inmate from the facility, wishing anonymity, told Pajhwok over a cell phone that some prisoners had managed to flee overnight. He had no idea how the inmates were able to escape.

“We got to know this morning that some prisoners from the third cell of the sixth bloc have escaped,” the inmate said.
Mujahid said the escaped men had joined the Taliban and were reunited with their families. He identified some the Taliban inmates as Samiullah, Dilawar, Wali Jan, Zia Ahmad Kandahari, Zia Ahmad Ghaznawi, Zabihullah, Saboor, Omar, Massoud, Sadiq and Massoud Sani.

There has been no reaction to the claim from the authorities concerned so far.
Last year, nearly 500 Taliban prisoners escaped from a fortified jail in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, fleeing through a 320-metre-long tunnel dug by militants from outside the prison.
At that time, the Taliban said they freed 541 fighters, 106 of whom were provincial-level commanders, and that the break was at least five months in the making. (Pajhwok)