A raid on some dusty, little defended outpost in the middle of nowhere, you ask? Not quite: It was the prison in Kandahar, the country’s second biggest city. Ace hints that Karzai’s incompetence is partly to blame, but short of NATO sealing the border or a sustained seek-and-destroy campaign by the Paksitani military in the tribal areas, there’s not much defense against a car bomb/suicide bomber onslaught except more troops:

The complex attack included a car bomb, suicide bombers who entered the prison and rockets fired from outside it, an attack that rattled the southern city of Kandahar with loud booms and set hundreds of Taleban insurgents fleeing into the night.

“All the prisoners escaped. There is no one left,” said Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the president of Kandahar’s provincial council.

Militants first exploded a water tanker near the entrance to the gate of the Kandahar prison, then several suicide bombers entered and exploded themselves, crumbling two prison walls, Karzai said. Many police were killed, Karzai said, but he did not immediately know how many.

At least 350 Taliban are on the lam. This becomes the second-most famous break since the start of the war there; number one, you may recall, involved four jihadis slipping out of Bagram AFB in 2005. Among them was AQ capo Omar al-Farouq, who somehow ended up dead a year later in Basra even though, we’re forever assured, none of the “real terrorists” are in Iraq. Exit question: Just how often are prison breaks happening in Afghanistan, anyway? Good lord.