HASAKEH, Syria: Kurdish-led forces hunted down militants on Thursday after retaking a Syria prison hit by an IS group attack a week ago, as human rights groups appealed for urgent help for wounded inmates.
Search operations across the sprawling complex in the city of Hasakeh found some militants still holed up in one wing of the prison a week after the brazen jailbreak attempt began.
The assault and ensuing clashes around the prison left more than 200 people dead in the militants’ most high-profile military operation since the loss of their “caliphate” nearly three years ago.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had retaken full control of Ghwayran prison on Wednesday, ending six days of battles that turned the largest city in northeastern Syria into a war zone.
In a statement on Thursday, the SDF said search operations inside the jail revealed “pockets of terrorists hiding in a northern section of the prison.”
It estimated that around 60-90 fighters were still holed up in one section of the jail and said that its forces have called on them to surrender.
It said that 3,500 IS inmates have so far surrendered to its forces.
In a statement overnight, the SDF said it was “chasing down IS cells on the southwestern outskirts of Hasakeh city”.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “coalition aircraft targeted IS fighters hunkered down in areas around the prison overnight, killing at least seven.”
It said 151 IS militants, 53 Kurdish fighters and seven civilians had been killed in the six days of violence.
The Kurdish authorities have insisted no inmates escaped from the compound but the Observatory has said significant numbers got away.
‘BROADER CRISIS’
Ghwayran held an estimated 3,500 IS inmates, including around 700 minors, when the initial IS attack began with explosives-laden vehicles driven by suicide bombers.
“The Kurdish-led forces’ recapture of the prison ends this immediate deadly ordeal, but the broader crisis involving these prisoners is far from over,” Human Rights Watch warned on Wednesday.
“The US-led coalition and others involved need to quickly ensure that all prisoners, especially the wounded, ill and children, are safe and receive food, water and medical care,” it added in a statement.
Prisoners who surrendered were being transferred to safer facilities as operations in Ghwayran continued, the SDF said.
Kurdish authorities say more than 50 nationalities are represented in Kurdish-run prisons holding more than 12,000 IS suspects.
The Kurdish administration has long warned it does not have the capacity to hold, let alone put on trial, all the IS fighters captured in years of operations.
“I think we should not have been surprised, we have been warning about this for quite some time,” UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen told the Security Council on Wednesday when asked about the attack.
The administration’s foreign policy chief Abdulkarim Omar said it was up to the international community to put foreign jihadists on trial or repatriate them.
The IS threat is “like a fireball, it gets more dangerous and complicated with time,” he said on Wednesday. – AFP
