SDF says it has captured the last Islamic State holdouts in Syrian prison battle
BAGHDAD — The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Wednesday that it had regained control of a prison for Islamic State militants in a northeast Syrian city, ending a days-long standoff that drew U.S. ground troops into the fray and exposed the jail’s vulnerability to attack.
The siege of Ghwaryan prison in Hasakah began late last Thursday, as Islamist militant fighters set off a car bomb that prompted some prisoners to riot and overpower their guards, believing that the attackers had come to free them, said officials from the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
On Wednesday afternoon, that battle appeared to be over, but no one seemed able to state definitively how many inmates had escaped or been killed. Among the inmates had been about 700 minors, some captured on the battlefield three years ago, others separated from their mothers in detention camps.
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In a photo from the prison yard, provided by an SDF official, traces of battle were etched on the walls.
One section was scorched, and other parts had jagged holes where explosives or shrapnel had struck them. Scores of prisoners stood in line, dressed in orange jumpsuits and thin gray sweaters.
Almost three years after the largely Kurdish-led SDF captured the final sliver of land that the Islamic State described as its “caliphate,” roughly 10,000 alleged members of the extremist group are packed into prison cells across northeast Syria, in legal limbo and awaiting trial or repatriation to their home countries.
About 3,000 of those were in the facility in Hasakah, officials said. A complete head count was not available Wednesday, but it appeared that dozens of inmates may have escaped and that scores had been killed.
Entry and exit from the city had been prohibited while fighting continued. The battle took place in a near-blackout of media, aside from official statements from the SDF, but video footage and phone calls from inside cells indicated that the damage and bloodshed could be extensive.
SDF spokesman Farhad Shami said there was significant damage in the prison’s north wing, where minors are held. “I would say that it can’t be a prison again,” Shami said. “There has been a big fight there.”
The attack on the prison was the Islamic State’s most serious strike in Syria in years. Negotiations had been underway for several days to end the standoff.
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“Since yesterday morning, the number of prison staff liberated has risen to 23,” the SDF said in a statement Wednesday before the final surrender.
Video footage circulated by the SDF Press Center showed several prison staffers being supported on their way out, their arms slumped around the shoulders of SDF colleagues as they hobbled toward an ambulance. After days without food or water, they looked exhausted.
The U.S.-led coalition launched days of airstrikes in support of the ground troops, many within the perimeter of the prison itself. A coalition official said that the force also bombed alleged militants in industrial land around the facility and that some of the strikes damaged the prison building.
Coalition ground forces were also present, using armored vehicles to support the SDF as it fanned out around the prison to make the perimeter impermeable.
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Huddling in a nearby mosque this week, civilians described a panicked escape as fighting engulfed the area. “We didn’t bring anything with us; we just wanted to get the kids out,” said 36-year-old Nashmiya al-Badir. “It’s been years since such an attack. We thought that ISIS must be far from where we live.”
The siege of Ghwaryan prison unfolded like a chronicle foretold. Senior Kurdish and U.S.-led coalition officials have been warning for years that the prison was poorly defended and vulnerable to attack. Islamic State leaders have repeatedly urged their followers to break free fellow militants.
“This isn’t a surprise,” said one senior Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. “Everyone knew this might happen.”
But the size of the attack from outside the prison walls caught the SDF by surprise, and it suggested that the militants, thought to be largely defeated, may have rebuilt their fighting capabilities more than previously thought. For days, they used snipers, grenades and suicide belts to hold their ground as civilians streamed out of surrounding neighborhoods amid the din of battle.
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“This is a symptom of the strength that ISIS has been building for itself over the past year and a half,” said Gregory Waters, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute.
In public statements, the SDF said the attack had been planned for up to six months. It was unclear how this was known, or why the attack had not been thwarted.
There are no indications that the Islamic State is strong enough to take territory, as it did in 2014 when it established a “caliphate” the size of Britain. But Syria’s fractured politics and geography have helped some sleeper cells to regroup, experts say.
When faced with pressure from the SDF and the U.S.-led coalition, some moved into territory held by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And when pressure increased there, they returned. Residents and officials say the fighters secured some freedom to operate by intimidating local communities.
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In recent months, the SDF says, it has prevented a string of planned Islamic State attacks in northeast Syrian cities, including the one on the Hasakah prison.
“These should have been the red flags,” Waters said. “The group’s growth has been going on for long enough that they’re confident enough in their ability to conduct more-complex attacks.”
Questions about the prisoners’ future abound now. Although the facility has housed hundreds of foreigners, among them North Americans, Europeans and Australians, their home governments have shown little sign they intend to repatriate their citizens for trial or rehabilitation.
Shami, the SDF spokesman, said 400 prisoners have been moved to other facilities, but he did not identify those places, citing security concerns. Some of the minors have also been moved out into the general prison population, he said, an action that prompted rights monitors to express concerns for their safety.
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As the siege unfolded, Letta Taylor, a counterterrorism lead for Human Rights Watch, said she was speaking directly to inmates from Canada and Australia. “They sound desperate. They say they’ve had no food or water for days, describe dead and wounded everywhere,” she said, adding that they feared stepping out in surrender, thinking they would be shot by the SDF.
Thousands more foreigners are spread across displacement camps that have become de facto detention facilities, with few signs that their governments will intervene any time soon.
A nearby British-funded detention facility, built to ease overcrowding in the older building, is nearing completion, officials said. But other facilities across the northeast are already in a perilous state, with defenses weak and overcrowding the norm.
Mustafa al-Ali in Kobane, Syria, contributed to this report.
Read more:
[Syrian Democratic Forces battle Islamic State for control of major prison]
[Here’s what we know about ISIS prisons controlled by Syrian Kurdish-led force]
[Inside Syria’s teeming ISIS prisons: broken men, child inmates, and orders to break free]
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