SHIBARGHAN, March 23: Hundreds of former Taliban fighters were freed in a goodwill gesture in this northern Afghan town on Friday, but thousands were still held in appalling conditions in one of Afghanistan’s harshest prisons.

Heavy prison gates were flung open and most of the 258 released captives poured out in a chaotic and jubilant mass from the prison of Shibarghan where they had been kept for four months. Groups of relatives, tears in their eyes, rushed to hug their emaciated but happy kinsmen, some of whom could not walk on their own and were supported or carried by their fellows.

Minutes earlier the inmates, soaked by rain and huddled in the muddy prison yard, had heard deputy defence minister Abdul Rashid Dostum say that Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai had ordered their release in a sign of reconciliation marking the spring holiday of Nauroz.

Karzai said at Thursday’s Nauroz festivities that a total of 300 Shibarghan captives would be freed to mark the holiday, which celebrates the spring equinox and the New Afghan year, revived after being banned for years by the Taliban.

“We’ll make sure we watch closely their fate after the release,” Samuel Emomet, coordinating the Red Cross detention activity in the area, told reporters.

THOUSANDS MORE: Roughly 3,000 other inmates remain in the crumbling, but well-guarded, prison.