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In Kandahar city, Afghan forces were checking vehicles and motorcyclists on roads. Some houses, where authorities suspected some escapees had hidden, were also searched, residents said.
Dozens of police and army soldiers were deployed outside the badly damaged prison.
They ordered vehicles to move away from the road which is only metres away from the jail. A pile of rubble caused from the collapse of two towers of the jail along with its broken gate could be seen.
The impact of the blast had badly damaged kiosks and shops across the road. "I was packing to finish for the day and all of a sudden heard a very, very loud explosion and then a huge flame," said Abdul Qodous, a shopkeeper.
"Then I started to run away,".
Some high ranking Taliban field commanders were also among those who have managed to escape, a politician said from Kandahar, the birth place and the main stronghold of the Taliban who were ousted from power in 2001.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, speaking to Reuters from an unknown location by phone, said all Taliban former prisoners had arrived at their "safe destinations".
The U.S. military has handed over an unspecified number of suspected Taliban fighters to Afghan custody under a programme agreed last year to transfer all Afghan prisoners from U.S. detention.
The attack came a day after international donors pledged more than $20 billion (10 billion pounds) for Afghanistan where over 60,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military as well as some 150,000 Afghan forces are trying to defeat the Taliban-led insurgents.
Frustration is high among Afghans over growing insecurity, lack of economic development, corruption and with hundreds of civilian deaths by foreign troops while hunting the Taliban.
On Saturday hundreds of people staged a protest in the southeastern province of Paktia, accusing U.S.-led coalition troops of killing civilians in an air strike this week.
Afghan officials say two women were killed in late Thursday's raid and that the rest of the victims were militants.
