As many as 19 people have been killed in a high-profile attack on a prison in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday, which saw more than one thousand prisoners trying to flee. On Sunday, the Islamic State has claimed the responsibility of the attack.
After almost twenty hours of crossfire, eight of the attackers were killed in a battle. Meanwhile, the number of prisoners remains still unclear. At the time of the attack, there were a total of 1,793 prisoners, most of them from IS or Taliban, Associated Press reported.
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However, it was not immediately clear whether the attack was carried out to free specific personalities in prison. According to the government spokesperson, more than 1,025 escaped prisoners have been brought back to jail, while 430 have been rescued. More than fifty were injured.
The authorities have not yet shared the exact figures of the number who remain at large or those who were killed. The Sunday attack comes on the third day of the ceasefire between the Taliban and the Afghan government, with hundreds of Taliban leaders released in a bid to start the intra-afghan dialogues moving between the two sides.
The Taliban, who are also the staunch rival of the Islamic State, had denied the responsibility of the attacks. It also comes a day after the Afghan forces claimed that they had killed a top IS a commander, Asadullah Orakzai, near Jalalabad.
Afghan security forces allege that Orakzai had been involved in several attacks on them. In Afghanistan, Nangahar was the first stronghold of the Islamic State. It still has significant control in the area, despite the claims by the government that last year the group’s affiliate Islamic State Khorasan had been completely defeated in the area.
This year, Nangahar had already seen deadly attacks, including the 12th May deadly suicide attack that killed nearly 32 mourners at the funeral of a police commander.
