Kurdish forces backed by US soldiers in Syria on Wednesday regained control of a large prison attacked by the Islamic State (IS) group, ending the largest jihadist assault in the country in three years.
The fighting that followed the assault launched on January 20 to free jihadists from the Ghwayran prison in Hassaké controlled by Kurdish forces, left 181 dead – 124 jihadists, 50 Kurdish fighters and seven civilians – according to the Syrian Observatory. human rights (OSDH).
They also forced to flee in freezing weather about 45,000 people who lived in areas near the prison, according to the UN.
Some displaced people have taken refuge in a mosque in Hassaké. “We are safe here, but there is no bread, water or sugar,” says Maya, 38, mother of nine, trying to calm her infant who is shivering with cold.
“The whole prison is under our control and the detainees are being transferred to a safe place,” said Nowruz Ahmed, a leader of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and spearhead of the fight against the IS group in Syria. , a country at war since 2011.
She added during a press conference that 9,000 Kurdish fighters took part in the operation and continued to comb the area.
Prisoners, who mutinied and served in an armory, took part in the fighting alongside attackers who managed to infiltrate the prison.
With truck bombs and heavy weapons, more than a hundred jihadists participated in the assault, the largest attack carried out by the IS group since its territorial defeat in Syria in 2019 against Kurdish forces.
“International problem”
The SDF were aided by US soldiers from the Washington-led international anti-jihadist coalition to retake the prison. The neighborhoods around have been secured, according to Kurdish forces.
An SDF spokesman, Farhad Shami, reported the surrender of jihadists entrenched in the prison before its resumption.
The FDS had cut off food and water in the prison for two days to force the jihadists to surrender, the OSDH said.
More than 1,000 jihadists, prisoners or infiltrators, have surrendered to Kurdish forces since January 20, the FDS and OSDH had previously indicated. And an unknown number of jihadists have managed to escape since the assault, the NGO said, which the FDS denied.
The prison housed at least 3,500 jihadists of different nationalities, according to the NGO.
The UN and human rights organizations have also reported hundreds of minors locked up in this former school converted into a detention center. The fate of these minors was not immediately known.
On Wednesday, the Kurdish autonomous administration which controls large areas of northern and northeastern Syria again appealed to the international community for help, fearing that the IS group is gaining strength.
“It’s an international problem that we cannot solve alone,” Abdel Karim Omar, a Kurdish leader, told AFP.
Most Western countries refuse to repatriate all of their citizens detained in prisons and camps under Kurdish control, contenting themselves with repatriations in dribs and drabs.
“We are dying of cold”
Experts see the jihadist assault as a step towards the resurgence of the IS group, which retreated to the Syrian desert after its defeat in Syria and in 2017 in neighboring Iraq.
“This is a global problem that requires many countries to come together to find a long-term sustainable solution,” the international coalition said in a statement. “Makeshift prisons throughout Syria are fertile ground” for the IS group.
And as always, civilians are paying the price for violence in a country where a complex war with multiple protagonists has claimed an estimated 500,000 lives since 2011.
Faced with the fighting and fearing the infiltration of jihadists in their neighborhoods near the prison, the inhabitants fled to take refuge with relatives, in a mosque or in tents when temperatures approach 0°C at night.
“We are freezing to death here. What we want is to be safe and to go home,” says Nabila, a mother of seven, with tears in her eyes.