The US-backed Syrian Defense Forces said Wednesday that it had freed 23 of its members from Islamic State militants inside a besieged prison in the Syrian town of Hasakah, as a days-long standoff that included US ground troops appeared to be drawing to a close.
The siege of Ghwaryan prison in the northeast city of Hasakah began late 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, officials from the SDF have said.
Almost three years after the SDF, which is largely Kurdish-led, captured the final sliver of land the extremist Islamic State group had described as its Islamic caliphate, roughly 10,000 alleged members are packed into prison cells across northeast Syria, in legal limbo and awaiting trial or repatriation to home countries around the world.
Roughly 3,000 of those were in the facility in Hasakah, officials said.
A full head count was not available Wednesday, but it appeared that dozens of inmates might have escaped, and also that scores had been killed.
Officials say that dozens are still holed up in a wing of the prison that had been reserved for children and teenagers.
The fighting is taking place in a near-media blackout, aside from official statements from the SDF, but video footage and phone calls from inside the cells indicate that the damage and bloodshed could be extensive.
Negotiations have been underway for several days to end the standoff.
“Since yesterday morning, the number of prison staff liberated has risen to 23,” the SDF said in a statement early Wednesday.
The siege of Ghwaryan Prison has unfolded like a chronicle foretold. Senior Kurdish and US-led coalition officials have been warning for years that it was poorly defended, and vulnerable to attack. Islamic State leaders have repeatedly urged their followers to break their fellow militants free.
“This isn’t a surprise,” said one senior Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. “Everyone knew this might happen.”
But the size of the attack from outside the prison walls caught the SDF by surprise, and suggested that the militants, thought to be largely defeated, might have rebuilt their fighting capabilities more than previously thought.
For days, they have used snipers, grenades and suicide belts to hold their ground as civilians streamed out of the surrounding neighborhoods amid the din of battle.
In public statements, the SDF said that the attack had been planned for up to six months. It was unclear how this was known, or why it had not been thwarted.
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.”