KABUL, July 11: Four Arab militants escaped from a heavily fortified jail at the main American military base in Afghanistan on Monday, the first time anyone has broken out of the facility, officials said. Helicopters and US ground troops were conducting a large-scale search for the “dangerous enemy combatants”, who slipped out of Bagram Air Base at around 5:00am, the US military said.

“These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants and still at large, and a full search is ongoing,” US military spokesman Lt Col Jerry O’Hara said. “The escape is under investigation.”

The chief of Bagram district, Kabir Ahmed, identified the men as Abdullah Hashimi from Syria, Mehmood Ahmed Mohammed from Kuwait, Mehmood Alfathani from Saudi Arabia and Mohammed Hassan from Libya.

O’Hara confirmed it was the first time that anyone had escaped from the military jail. “That is what our records indicate — it has not happened in the past,” he said.

On Saturday, the US military released another batch of 76 Afghan prisoners from Bagram as part of ongoing efforts to promote national reconciliation.

Taliban fighters slain: Afghan police killed four Taliban fighters and arrested one in a clash in the country’s south that also left one officer wounded, officials said Monday.

The gun battle broke out on Sunday when police raided a militant stronghold in the Chanaran valley of Deh Chopan district, Zabul province.

“Four Taliban were killed in the fighting with police, and the rest of them managed to flee into the mountains,” provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Ali Khail told AFP.

But Abdul Latif Hakimi, claiming to represent the ousted Taliban regime, put the police death toll at nine and said only two Taliban were wounded and none killed in the clash. —AFP