Thirteen prisoners, including Taliban militants, have escaped from a prison in western Afghanistan demonstrating a deterioratiing security situation.

Police say the fugitives fled through a tunnel they had dug from their cell in the city of Farah. One of the fugitives has reportedly been arrested.

Police are investigating how they managed to dig the tunnel and if they had any accomplices.

Prior to this escape, up to one-thousand Taliban inmates had broken out of a jail in the southern city of Kandahar in June after a bomber blew up the front gates.

Afghanistan has suffered from sustained militancy, which is no longer limited to the south and has spread to the east and west as well.

The 2001 US invasion was said to be aimed at ridding Afghanistan of al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists and bringing peace and stability to the country.

However, nearly 110,000 foreign troops currently fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have not been able to provide stability to the war-torn country, nearly nine years after the invasion.

JR/SC/MMN