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.
Hours later, the Syrian government announced a new four-day truce after a previous ceasefire between government forces and the SDF broke down. The two sides have been clashing for two weeks, amid a breakdown in negotiations over implementation of a deal to merge their forces together.
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.
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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The SDF subsequently confirmed that its guards had withdrawn from the camp, blaming “international indifference toward the issue of the ISIS terrorist organization and the failure of the international community to assume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.”
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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.
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