KANDAHAR (AFP) - A desperate hunt was under way Saturday for more than 1,100 prisoners who escaped a jail in southern Afghanistan when Taliban rebels blasted it open, killing 15 guards, officials said. The Taliban said 400 of its own fighters escaped when the rebels attacked the facility in the city of Kandahar late Friday, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards. They spent two months planning the raid, which deputy justice minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai said was their most sophisticated yet. "A massive operation is under way to find the escaped inmates. The Afghan security forces are searching for them within the city and along the main and secondary roads," Hashimzai told AFP in the capital, Kabul. None of the escaped inmates has yet been caught, he added. "Afghanistan national security forces and ISAF forces have cordoned off the area to re-establish security and recapture the escapees," General Carlos Branco, a spokesman for the NATO's International Security Assistance Force told AFP. "More than 1,100 prisoners were able to escape." A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said the rebels used suicide bombs and detonated a bomb-laden water tanker in the attack. "First we exploded two suicide attacks and then our mujahedin riding motorcycles entered the prison and killed the remaining security guards. "We successfully freed all prisoners, including our jailed Taliban and other prisoners," he told AFP. A statement posted on the Taliban website later said about 400 Taliban-linked militants and several hundred other inmates were freed from the prison. The statement, signed by Ahmadi, said the rebels had planned the attack two months ago. "Today we succeeded," it said, adding the raid was part of a militant operation - Ibrat, which means Lesson - which the rebels declared at the beginning of this year. An AFP reporter based in the southern city said large numbers of security forces including those of the US-trained Afghan national army had been deployed to search vehicles. Authorities had so far recovered the bodies of at least 15 security guards, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and brother of President Hamid Karzai told AFP. "We've discovered the bodies of 15 security guards who were killed in the attack. The casualties might be more," Karzai added. "Several hundred prisoners including Taliban have escaped," he said, without giving a precise figure.