Posted on 02/26/2006 6:43:01 AM PST by Kjobs
KABUL, Afghanistan - Terror convicts and hundreds of other inmates clashed with guards and took control of parts of a high-security prison in Afghanistan's capital, officials said Sunday.
Police and soldiers surrounded the Policharki Prison on Sunday as government officials attempted to negotiate with the inmates, who include al-Qaida and Taliban militants.
An Associated Press reporter heard two bursts of gunfire about two hours apart from inside the prison Sunday. A few minutes after the first gunfire, an ambulance carrying an unidentified patient drove out of the prison.
The trouble began Saturday night when prisoners forced guards out of a prison block, said Abdul Salaam Bakshi, chief of prisons in Afghanistan. He accused al-Qaida and Taliban inmates of inciting other prisoners.
The Afghan army deployed more than 100 soldiers to surround the prison and parked eight tanks and armored personnel carriers outside the gates.
"All the problem is inside the prison," Bakshi said. "We want to peacefully solve this problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Let's send in Janet Reno to solve this.
Pol-i-Charki prison is only a few kilometers from the Main Afghan National Army Base, where the Corps HQ is for the Captol Region. The Prison itself is very strongly built - it is where the former communist Afghan Regimes and the Soviets used to send the political opposition. It is the Afghan version of Moscow's Lubyanka. If those rioters did not escape in the initial ruckus, and the ANA already has the place surrounded, its all over except for the deliberate crushing of resistance. One traditional way of doing this in Afghanistan is to flood the place with fuel and light it up, but thankfully those days are probably gone. A lot of the same fellows who used to fight like that will be conducting the operation to reassert control, so there is unlikely to be much hand wringing about shooting some, or a bunch, of these inmates.
Muslims riot.
Dog bites man.
What's new?
Tear gas.. and lots of it.
We're waayyy more reluctant to burn down a prison full of America-hating people who yearn for the dark ages than the Clintons had about burning down a Texas church...
Then, the attitude was, "They asked for it..."
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