Gweran prison in Hasaka province in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) where dozens of foreign Islamic State fighters are currently being detained, October 2019. Photo: Kurdistan24 TV
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— Kurdish-led security forces said they restored calm Monday at a prison in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), northeast Syria, after a riot by Islamic State group inmates.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four detainees believed to have broken out of Ghourian prison in the town of Hasaks had been tracked down within the jail.
Some 5,000 IS suspects are held in the jail run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to the Observatory.
On Sunday, prisoners managed to dismantle cell doors and pierce through dormitory walls, overrunning the jail’s ground floor, the SDF said.
“The situation in the prison is totally back under control,” the SDF said Monday in a statement.
Anti-jihadist forces linked to the SDF had “intervened directly, ending the riot and securing” the facility.
The statement said “no escape had occurred”, refuting earlier reports.
IS jihadists overran large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, imposing their brutal rule over millions.
But various military offensives slowly whittled down their territorial “caliphate”, wiping it out a year ago.
Syria’s Kurds hold some 12,000 suspected jihadists in several prisons across the northeast of the country.
They are mostly Syrians and Iraqis but also 2,500 to 3,000 foreigners from dozens of foreign countries.
Kurdish authorities called for foreign countries to repatriate their nationals accused of belonging to IS, but these have been largely reluctant.
Instead the Kurds are now urging the international community to help better secure their jails and organise trials of IS-linked detainees on their own soil.
Despite the end of their territorial control, IS fighters still maintain a presence in SDF-held areas and continue to claim frequent attacks.
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.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of foreigners suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children, during the battle against IS in Syria and are being held in by Kurdish forces in Syrian Kurdistan.
The Kurdish-led forces also hold about 100,000 Syrian and foreign women and children who are family members of militant suspects in squalid camps across the areas they control.
Copyright © 2020, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP