U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces ended a deadly, weeklong assault by the extremists on one of the largest detention facilities in Syria the, Al-Sina’a prison in Syria’s north-eastern city of Hasaka. These actions are being viewed as an effort to free all ISIS members detained during the campaigns that drove ISIS from its last territorial claim on Syria in 2019. Nations believe that this is an attempt to put ISIS back on its road of terror and violence worldwide. The attack was the biggest by ISIS since the fall of the group’s “Caliphate” in 2019.
ISIS can also be known as ISIL or Daesh. It emerged from the remnants of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a local offshoot of al Qaeda founded by Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2004. The killing of the former ISIS Caliphate, on March 23, 2019, formally ended the claim ISIS had on its never-ending expansion.
The assault on the prison began last Thursday just hours before another shameless attack on military troops in neighboring Iraq. ISIS fighters used vehicles and explosives to ram through the prison walls before entering the building with heavy machine guns. Many are still concerned for the 850 “cubs of the caliphate”, children trapped inside the overcrowded prison who were forced to live alongside the nearly 5,000 prisoners. An audio recording sent to the Associated Press from a 17-year-old Australian boy inside the prison sees him appealing for help, saying he was injured and bleeding. The boy said his friends had been killed and he had seen bodies of kids with ages ranging from eight to twelve years old.
Fighters from both sides have faced large amounts of killings prior to regaining control of the prison.
Following the week-long airstrikes and displacement of thousands of civilians living nearby, a spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Farhad Shami said, “The whole prison is now under control. The operation today was on the cells of the child detainees. We were able to surround a number of terrorists who had taken them as shields and we killed them.”
Some inmates managed to escape during the siege. However, the SDF said the total number of fugitives remained unclear. The revival of such a group unleashes a mix of fears and tensions to world leaders and citizens alike per ISIS’s unique ability to self-finance and continue recruitment. This event is being called the 2022 Battle of al-Hasakah.
