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UK/US special forces in prison fight

Hundreds of Islamic State (IS) jihadists have surrendered after British and US special forces helped Kurdish fighters reclaim a Syrian prison complex after a lethal, six-day siege.

Deadly clashes broke out last week when IS staged a sophisticated jailbreak attack, aimed at freeing thousands of the group’s fighters locked up in Gweiran prison in the northeastern city of Hassakeh.

It was the extremists’ most violent assault since losing their territory in Syria three years ago.

Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said the Western-backed Kurdish militia were in ‘‘entire control’’ of the prison and had secured the surrender ‘‘of all Daesh terrorists,’’ using another term for IS militants.

While sporadic clashes reportedly continued in the surrounding Gweiran neighbourhood, footage showed hundreds of prisoners surrendering.

One video showed a long line of prisoners hobbling past an American Bradley Fighting Vehicle before lifting their clothing to show SDF fighters they were not wearing suicide vests or hiding weapons.

The prison is the largest facility for IS suspects in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria, holding an estimated 4000 people from dozens of countries.

Aerial footage showed heavy damage to the UK-funded facility, which was attacked by several IS suicide vehicles and also by USled coalition air strikes. British and American special forces were deployed to support the SDF.

There was no immediate news of at least 700 children detained in the prison, though one prisoner told Human Rights Watch he thought ‘‘tens’’ of boys had been killed.

‘‘It’s hard to guess, honestly it’s very chaotic,’’ the prisoner told HRW of the death toll. ‘‘One kid I evacuated as we were trying to stop his bleeding, he died in front of me. His leg was busted open . . . We tried to stop the bleeding with a shirt. He looked very young.’’

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 124 militants and prisoners were killed, while 50 SDF fighters and seven civilians had died.

It was unclear whether prisoners had escaped during the attack, which began last Thursday with an estimated 100 IS fighters assaulting the complex and continuing to fight in the surrounding neighbourhood for a week.

Kurdish forces had cut off food and water to the jail for two days to pressure holdout jihadists to give themselves up, the Observatory said.

Many of the surrendering prisoners appeared wounded, though some likely had long term injuries from past battles.

Some prisoners were coughing, with one reporting to HRW that the prison faced a tuberculosis epidemic. ‘‘Now all the people with tuberculosis got mixed in with the rest of the population,’’ he reportedly said.

World

en-nz

2022-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuff.pressreader.com/article/282003265813361

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