SOHR: Jihadist fighters holed up with minors in Syria prison
Kurdish forces preparing for possible attempt to storm detention facility
Kurdish forces geared up Monday for an assault on a prison in northeast Syria that Islamic State group fighters stormed last week, sparking fears over the fate of hundreds of under-age detainees.
IS fighters on Thursday rammed two explosives-packed vehicles into the Kurdish-run Ghwayran prison to launch a brazen jailbreak operation that plunged the city of Hasakeh into chaos.
The attack – the group’s biggest since their once sprawling proto-state was defeated in 2019 – already killed more than 150 people, including more than 100 among jihadist ranks.
Fighting drove hundreds of residents of Syria’s largest Kurdish city to flee, but the violence receded on Monday, with the presence of hundreds of children inside the prison complicating an assault.
The Britain-based group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish forces moved armored vehicles inside the main prison yard, ahead of a possible attempt to storm the facility.
IS fighters were holed up in one building on the northern side of the prison after “dozens of jihadists surrendered to Kurdish forces” in recent hours, according to the war monitoring group.
Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said several IS members handed themselves over following an SDF raid inside the jail.
An AFP correspondent in the area saw buses and military vehicles transferring what appeared to be IS fighters out of the prison.
The autonomous Kurdish authorities running the region imposed a state of emergency across Hasakeh, after at least seven civilians were caught in the crossfire and killed.
According to rights groups and the United Nations, more than 700 minors are thought to be held in Ghwayran, a former school converted into a detention facility that is badly overcrowded, housing at least 3,500 suspected IS members.
Source: I 24