RAQQA, Syria (AP) — Guards from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces abandoned a camp Tuesday in northeast Syria housing thousands of people linked to the Islamic State group, and the Syrian military said that allowed the detainees to escape.
The al-Hol camp houses mainly women and children who are family members of IS members or accused of being otherwise affiliated with the group. Thousands of accused IS militants are separately housed in prisons
in northeast Syria.
Syria's interior ministry accused the SDF of allowing the release of “a number of detainees from the ISIS militant (group) along with their families.” The AP could not independently confirm if detainees had escaped from the camps or how many.
The SDF subsequently confirmed that its guards had withdrawn from the camp, blaming “international indifference toward the issue of the ISIS terrorist organization and the failure of the international community to assume its responsibilities in addressing this serious matter,” using another abbreviation for IS. But the group did not say whether any detainees were able to escape.
It said its forces had redeployed “in the vicinity of cities in northern Syria that are facing increasing risks and threats” from government forces.
An official with the U.S. military’s Central Command who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly said, “We are aware of the reports and are closely monitoring the situation.”
The SDF and the government also have traded blame over the escape Monday of IS members from a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, amid the breakdown of a ceasefire deal reached between the two sides on Sunday.
The Syrian defense ministry in a statement said it is prepared to take over al-Hol camp and the prisons and accused the SDF of using them as “bargaining chips” to “sow chaos and destabilize the region.”
At its peak in 2019 when IS was defeated in Syria, some 73,000 people were living at al-Hol camp. Since then the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens.
Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for displaced in northeastern Syria, told The Associated Press that the al-Hol currently has a population of about 24,000 of which Syrians make the largest group with about 14,500 followed by Iraqis, who are nearly 3,000.
He added that about 6,500 from other nationalities are held in the highly-secured section of the camp known as the annex as they are the most die-hard IS supporters who came from around the world to join the extremist group.
Earlier Tuesday, Syria's interior ministry said that 120 Islamic State members had escaped Monday from the prison in Shaddadeh, amid clashes between government forces and the SDF. Security forces recaptured 81 of the escapees while pursuing the remaining fugitives, the statement said.
Also Tuesday, the SDF accused “Damascus-affiliated factions” of cutting off water supplies to the al-Aqtan prison near the city of Raqqa, which it called a “blatant violation of humanitarian standards.”
The SDF, the main U.S.-backed force that fought IS in Syria, controls more than a dozen prisons in the northeast where some 9,000 IS members have been held for years without trial. Many of the detained extremists are believed to have carried out atrocities in Syria and Iraq after IS declared a caliphate in June 2014 over large parts of Syria and Iraq.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
Under a deal announced Sunday, government forces were to take over control of the prisons from the SDF, but the transfer did not go smoothly. On Monday, Syrian government forces and SDF fighters clashed around two of the prisons.
The clashes came as SDF chief commander Mazloum Abdi was said to be in Damascus to attempt to solidify Sunday's ceasefire deal, which ended days of deadly fighting during which government forces captured wide areas of northeast Syria from the SDF.
Abdi issued no statement after the meeting and the SDF later issued a statement calling for “all of our youth” to “join the ranks of the resistance," appearing to signal that the deal had fallen apart.
Elham Ahmad, a senior official with the Kurdish-led local administration in northeast Syria, told journalists Tuesday that the ceasefire had fallen apart after the Abdi requested a five-day grace period to implement the conditions and Syrian Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa refused.
She blamed the government for violating the agreement but called for a return to dialogue.
In response to a journalist's question regarding whether the SDF had requested help from Israel - which previously intervened in clashes between government forces and groups from the Druze religious minority last year - Ahmad said “certain figures” from Israel had communicated with the SDF. She added that the SDF is ready to accept support from any source available.
Since toppling Bashar Assad in December 2024, Syria’s new leaders have struggled to assert their full authority over the war-torn country. An agreement was reached in March that would merge the SDF with Damascus, but it didn’t gain traction.
Earlier this month, clashes broke out in the city of Aleppo, followed by the government offensive that seized control of Deir el-Zour and Raqqa provinces, critical areas under the SDF that include oil and gas fields, river dams along the Euphrates and border crossings.
Al-Sharaa postponed a planned trip to Germany on Tuesday amid the ongoing tensions in northeast Syria.
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Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed.
