Last friday at 9:30pm local time, a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at the gate of Kandahar city’s Sarposa prison. Following the blast, witnesses report 30 motorcycles entered the breach and blew a second hole in the rear wall of the prison. During the following firefight nine hundred prisoners escaped.
Colonel Thomas J. McGrath of the Afghanistan Regional Security Integration Command - South (ARSIC-South), attended a Department of Defense Blogger’s Roundtable this morning to discuss the aftermath of last week’s prison break in Kandahar. You can listen to the entire conference call here. Significant to this blog, according to Col. McGrath the prison break has had no immediate effect on humanitarian, MEDCAP, or PRT programs. That is good news, however I worry the increased Taliban presence in the region might disrupt the programs in the future. Nevertheless, Col. McGrath was confident in the ability of Afghan and Coalition forces not to be derailed by the prison break, “We are making a lot of progress here.”
We wish him luck.