BAGHDAD and Washington said the transfer of Islamic State detainees from northeast Syria to detention centers in Iraq began after Baghdad requested the move, with support from both the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government.
American and Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that the decision followed an Iraqi request, a day after the U.S. military said it had started transferring some of the roughly 9,000 IS detainees held in more than a dozen detention centers in northeast Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
The move to begin transfers came after Syrian government forces took control of the sprawling al-Hol camp, which houses thousands of mostly women and children, from the SDF as the group withdrew as part of a ceasefire. State media reported that troops on Monday seized a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, where some IS detainees escaped and many were recaptured.
The SDF said on Thursday that Syrian government forces shelled al-Aqtan prison near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa with heavy weapons and, at the same time, imposed a siege around the prison using tanks while deploying fighters. The prison, where some IS detainees are held, was surrounded by government forces earlier this week, and negotiations were ongoing on the future of the detention facility.
Early Friday, Syria’s defense ministry announced an “internationally sponsored agreement” had been reached for the withdrawal of some 800 SDF fighters who had been inside the prison, with the facility to be handed over to the Syrian army.
The AP report also said U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack met with SDF leader Mazloum Abdi in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region. In explaining the rationale for the transfers, Iraqi officials said Baghdad became concerned about potential escape risks as government forces pushed deeper into northeast Syria along the border.
An Iraqi security official said the transfer decision was an Iraqi decision and was welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government. The official also said it was in Iraq’s security interest to detain the IS detainees in Iraqi prisons rather than leaving them in Syria.
A senior U.S. military official confirmed to the AP that Iraq “offered proactively” to take the IS prisoners rather than the U.S. requesting it. A Syrian foreign ministry official said the plan to transfer IS prisoners from Syria to Iraq had been under discussion for months before the recent clashes with the SDF. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The AP said U.S. Central Command reported that the first transfer on Wednesday involved 150 IS members taken from Syria’s northeastern province of Hassakeh to “secure locations” in Iraq, and that up to 7,000 detainees could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities. Iraq has also beefed up patrols along its border with Syria, with tanks lined up along the frontier in Sinjar province on Thursday.
In Sinjar, members of the Yazidi minority were described as especially fearful after IS militants overran the area in 2014, when they attacked Yazidis and killed men and boys and sold women into sexual slavery or forced them to convert and marry militants.
Separately, the AP report said the SDF accused the Syrian government of violating a four-day truce declared on Tuesday. It said the Syrian government forces pounded the southern outskirts of Kobani, a town recently besieged after the government’s push in the northeast.
Nesrin Abdullah, a commander with the Kurdish women’s militia in Syria who spoke from inside Kobani during an online news conference, warned that worsening conditions could lead to mass deaths if fighting continued. She said there was no electricity or running water in Kobani, a decade after it became a symbol of resistance against IS, and she said the people in the town were facing a genocide.
At the United Nations, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told the Security Council on Thursday that clashes were taking place in parts of Hassakeh province and also on the outskirts of Kobani, an enclave controlled by the SDF, and that the situation elsewhere was “very tense.”