Afghan forces retake the prison after an ISIS attack that killed at least 29

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Afghan forces recaptured a prison in the east of the country on Monday afternoon, following a gun battle several hours a day after the facility was targeted by Islamic State militants in an attack that killed 29 people. The prison is believed to hold hundreds of ISIS members.

The attack highlighted the challenges ahead for Afghanistan, even as U.S. and NATO forces begin withdrawing following a U.S.-Taliban peace deal reached earlier this year.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Fawad Aman said the prison in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, located about 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of Kabul, was returned in the afternoon. The fighting had also left at least 50 wounded, he said.

Even as Afghan troops retake the prison, IS militants continued to attack Afghan security forces from a nearby neighborhood. The sporadic gunfire erupted from nearby residential buildings in Jalalabad, an area of ​​high security near the provincial provincial office.

As security forces raided the jail, they found the bodies of two Taliban prisoners apparently killed by the Islamic State group, showing tensions between two militant factions fighting each other in eastern Afghanistan.

The 29 dead included civilians, prisoners, guards and Afghan security forces, said Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor.

The attack began Sunday when an Islamic State suicide bomber drove a car loaded with explosives to the main gate of the prison, detonating the bomb. Islamic State militants opened fire on prison guards and poured in through the breach.

The IS branch in Afghanistan, known as IS in Khorasan province and headquartered in Nangarhar province, later claimed responsibility for the attack.

However, about 1,500 prisoners there escaped during the fighting. Khyogyani said about 1,000 previously escaped prisoners had been found by security forces across the city. It was not immediately clear if any prisoners were still free.

The attack came a day after authorities said Afghan special forces killed a senior Islamic State commander near Jalalabad. Several hundred prisoners in Jalalabad are believed to be members of the Islamic State.

The fighting ended after the final assailants, stopped at the nearby housing complex, were killed, said Aman, a defense ministry spokesman. He said 10 IS attackers were also killed in the operation and that the attackers killed five prisoners, including two members of the rival Taliban, before the raid ended.

As the Islamic State group has seen its so-called caliphate stretch into Iraq and Syria eliminated after a years-long campaign, the group has continued fighting in Afghanistan. The extremists have also fought with the Taliban in the country, who overthrew the US after the US-led invasion in 2001 following the September 11 attacks.

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Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told the Associated Press that his group was not involved in the Jalalabad attack. The US reached a peace deal with the Taliban in February. A crucial second round of negotiations between the Taliban and the political leadership in Kabul has not yet begun.

The Taliban had announced a three-day ceasefire that began last Friday for the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The ceasefire expired at 12 a.m. Monday, though it was not immediately clear whether it would expand as the U.S. pushed for an early start to intra-Afghan negotiations that have been repeatedly delayed since Washington signed a peace deal with the Taliban.

“We have a ceasefire and we are not involved in any of these attacks anywhere in the country,” Shaheen said.

The Taliban had also denied involvement in a suicide attack in eastern Logar province late Thursday that killed at least nine people and wounded 40.

Afghanistan has seen a recent onslaught of violence, with most of the attacks demanded by local IS collaborators.