More than 470 inmates at a prison in southern Afghanistan have escaped through a tunnel hundreds of metres long and dug from outside the jail.
Officials in the city of Kandahar said many of those who escaped from Sarposa jail were Taliban insurgents.
The Kandahar provincial governor's office said at least 12 had since been recaptured but gave no further details.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the escape was a "disaster" which should never have happened.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said it had taken five months to build the 360m (1,180ft) tunnel to a cell within the political wing.
He said it was dug from a house north-east of the prison that was rented by "friends" of the Taliban, and had to bypass security checkpoints and the main Kandahar-Kabul road.
About 100 of those who escaped were Taliban commanders, he added. Most of the others are thought to have been insurgents. The prison holds about 1,200 inmates.
Second jailbreak
"A tunnel hundreds of metres long was dug from the south of the prison into the prison and 476 political prisoners escaped last night," said prison director General Ghulam Dastageer Mayar.
One escapee told the BBC it had taken him about 30 minutes to walk the length of the tunnel. The escape took most of the night and vehicles were waiting at the exit point to take prisoners away.
Kandahar's provincial authorities said a search operation was under way.
So far, only about a dozen of the prisoners have been recaptured. Police said they were looking for men without shoes - many escaped barefoot.
The jailbreak is the second major escape from the prison in three years.
The Great Escape
The Great Escape
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: The Great Escape
The movie must not have been translated into Afghani. Seems like preventing tunneling might be one of the daily security activities.