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Kabul: Afghanistan's intelligence service said on Saturday it broke up a Taliban plot to attack the country's most notorious prison with a wave of suicide bombers.
The thwarted attack on the Pul-i-Charki prison on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, was meant to free Taliban and criminal prisoners, the Afghan intelligence service said in a statement.
The attack would have mirrored a massive assault in June on a prison in Kandahar - the country's second largest city and the spiritual home of the Taliban - that freed almost 900 prisoners, including about 400 Taliban fighters.
Three police who worked at Pul-i-Charki were arrested, the intelligence service said. They were allegedly paid off by militants to help carry out the attack.
The three officers smuggled explosives and mobile phone batteries and chargers into the prison so two Taliban prisoners could make suicide vests, it said, adding the officers confessed their roles in the plot.
The intelligence service did not say when the arrests took place or when the attack was to be carried out. The commander of the prison, Major General Abdul Baqi Basody, said the three were arrested about two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the head of Britain's armed forces told a newspaper out yesterday said the international military mission in Afghanistan has "no end point",
Sir Jock Stirrup's comments come a week after Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain's top military commander in the war-torn country, said the public should not expect a "decisive military victory" in Afghanistan.
Stirrup, the chief of the defence staff, told The Times that in both Iraq and Afghanistan, British troops were on a "journey that never finishes".
The 58-year-old air chief marshal said the mission in Afghanistan, where Britain has 7,800 troops fighting Taliban insurgents, was not a win or lose battle. Afghanistan would be a longer operation, he warned.
Clashes
US-led coalition and Afghan troops killed nine militants in overnight clashes in southern and central Afghanistan, the US military said yesterday. Violence has surged in Afghanistan with some 3,800 people, a third of them civilians, killed by the end of July this year.
In the latest fighting, US led coalition troops killed four militants including two Al Qaida and Taliban commanders in Ghazni province on Friday, about 200km southwest of Kabul. Two other suspects were detained.
Appointments
Karzai reshuffles cabinet
Afghan President Hamid Karzai reshuffled his cabinet yesterday, moving the education minister to take over the Interior Ministry which administers the police force and which has been criticised for corruption.
The appointment of Hanif Atmar to the Interior Ministry is likely to be praised by Karzai's Western backers as he is seen as a capable administrator who has made great improvements in education and is seen as being free from any taint of corruption.
Karzai made the new appointments "in order to bring positive changes in good governance", said the spokesman for the office of state minister for parliamentary affairs, Asif Nang.
The outgoing Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel would become minister for refugees, while Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Farooq Wardak would become education minister, Nang said.
Other new appointments included the former governor of the southern troubled province of Kandahar, Asadullah Khaled, to the ministry of parliamentary affairs and Asef Rahimi to the agriculture ministry.
- Reuters
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