SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Twenty “dangerous terrorists” have escaped from a prison in Hasakah city, an Iraqi security advisor said on Thursday.
“The presence of this large number of terrorists in [SDF] prisons with poor capabilities poses a constant and permanent danger if the international community does not carry out its duties,” Araji said during a meeting EU ambassador to Iraq Ville Varjola.
The Iraqi official used an acronym for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
ISIS militants attacked Ghweran-Sina’a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakah on January 20 in an attempt to free prisoners, including the group’s leaders.
The SDF backed by U.S.-led Coalition forces thwarted the attack, in which at least prison 200 prison inmates were killed.
Thirty members of the SDF and local security forces died since the attack on the jail.
The SDF said around 3,500 “terrorist detainees involved in the last mutiny to support the terrorist attackers coming from outside” had surrendered.
“Twenty dangerous terrorists managed to escape from Hasakah prison,” the Iraqi security advisor said.
The jail is the largest among several publicly known ones where the SDF holds suspected militants and other detainees in what aids groups say are overcrowded and inhumane conditions.
The Kurdish-led group has repeatedly called on the international community to repatriate their citizens – women and children associated with ISIS – held in its detention centers in northeast Syria.
