Fighting raged Saturday for the third day in a row between the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, where violence has left nearly 90 dead and displaced thousands of civilians.
The clashes were triggered by an attack launched Thursday evening by IS fighters against Ghwayran prison, one of the largest housing jihadists in Syria, and guarded by Kurdish forces.
“At least 28 members of the Kurdish security forces, five civilians and 56 IS fighters have been killed” since the start of the attack, claimed by the jihadist group on Friday, said Rami Abdel Rahmane, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
ISIS was defeated in 2019 in Syria by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) supported by the international coalition, and thousands of jihadists have since been detained in the north and northeast of the country, territories in the hands of the Kurds. The group, however, still manages to carry out deadly attacks thanks to sleeper cells.
Thursday night’s attack, the largest since IS’s defeat in Syria, targeted a prison in the city of Hassakeh that houses some 3,500 suspected IS members including leaders of the group, according to the report. OSDH.
During the attack, the jihadists “seized weapons they had found” in the armory of the detention center, according to the same source.
Hundreds of prisoners who escaped have been caught but dozens are still at large, said the OSDH.
The NGO also claimed that the prison was surrounded by Kurdish forces, with the support of the air forces of the international coalition.
Exodus of civilians
“Intense fighting” took place in neighborhoods north of the prison, and raids left more than 20 dead among IS fighters, according to a statement released on Saturday by the SDF who seized explosive belts, weapons and ammunition.
A correspondent of theFrance Media Agency (AFP) on Saturday saw Kurdish fighters carrying out raids on houses near the prison while coalition helicopters flew overhead.
Kurdish fighters were gathered around the bodies of five suspected jihadists, he said.
The fighting also triggered an exodus of civilians who had to flee in the bitter cold.
“Thousands of people have left their homes near the prison, fleeing to nearby areas where their relatives live,” Sheikhmous Ahmed, an administration official in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, told AFP.
Some, however, had nowhere to go: “We only have God,” said Abu Anas, leaving his neighborhood with his wife and four children.
In a video released Saturday on its propaganda outlet Amaq, IS said it showed jihadists infiltrating the prison at the start of the attack, and surrounding what appeared to be a group of guards. AFP could not independently verify the authenticity of this video.
The day before, IS had already claimed responsibility for the attack in a press release, indicating that the objective was “to free the prisoners”.
According to Nicholas Heras, of the Newlines Institute in Washington, “prison breaks represent the best opportunity for IS to regain its strength. […] and Ghwayran prison is a good target because it is overcrowded”.
“Responsibilities”
Many Kurdish-held prisons were originally schools and therefore ill-suited to holding inmates for the long term.
According to the Kurdish authorities, some 12,000 jihadists of more than 50 nationalities are detained in their prisons.
For Abdelkarim Omar, a senior foreign policy official in the Kurdish administration, the IS attack on Ghwayran prison is due to “the inability of the international community to assume its responsibilities”.
The Kurds are demanding the repatriation of thousands of jihadist prisoners who have European nationalities in particular, but most of the countries they contact are reluctant to take back their citizens.
Triggered in March 2011 by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, the war in Syria has become more complex over the years with the involvement of regional and international powers and the rise of jihadists.
The conflict has killed around 500,000 people, devastated the country’s infrastructure and displaced millions of people since its outbreak.