Islamic State prisoners attempt to break jail from Navxure prisons amid Turkish attacks in Syria’s Kurdish region, October 11, 2019. Photo: CCTV/Firat News Agency ANF
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— Kurdish officials said five detained members of the Islamic State group managed to escape from a Kurdish-run prison in Syrian Kurdistan (northeastern Syria) on Friday after Turkish shelling hit the area.
“Five terrorists escaped from Navkur after shelling struck near the prison,” said an official from the Syrian Democratic Forces, the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region.
A prison guard at Navkur, which is located in the town of Qamishli, had told AFP before the reported breakout that the facility housed mostly foreign jihadists.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies on Wednesday launched a deadly cross-border military offensive against areas controlled by the SDF.
The attack has resulted in artillery fire striking near a number of critical facilities, including some of the prisons where thousands of IS suspects are being held.
Without the support of US troops, who pulled back from the border earlier this week, Kurdish fighters have redeployed from other areas in a bid to hold off Turkish-backed forces.
Another Kurdish official said the Jerkin facility, another nearby prison, had also come under regular Turkish fear, increasing the chances of a breakout there too.
The prospect of mass breakouts is causing deep concern among many foreign powers, who fear the return on their soil of IS fighters and the resurgence of the jihadist group in the region.
According to the Kurdish administration, some 12,000 men are held in seven detention centres across Kurdish-controlled areas.
Among them are Syrians and Iraqis, as well as 2,500 to 3,000 suspected IS fighters from 54 other countries.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq, Kurdish officials said.
The United States already plucked two of the most high-profile IS jihadists to have been captured alive and spirited them out of Syria.
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