The international coalition warns of the possibility of a repeat of the Al-Hasakah operation in Iraq

[size=52]The international coalition warns of the possibility of a repeat of the Al-Hasakah operation in Iraq and Syria[/size]

[size=45]Translation / Hamed Ahmed[/size]
[size=45]The New York Times indicated in a report that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which waged four days of fierce battles to break a siege planned by ISIS on a prison in northwestern Syria, warned Sunday that ISIS militants are using more than 600 children. They are being held in the compound as human shields, and while the international coalition stated that the Hasaka attack would not pose a major threat to Iraq, it warned at the same time of the possibility of ISIS planning any further attacks on detention facilities in Iraq and Syria.[/size]
[size=45]The United States sent attack helicopters and carried out air strikes to the prison to help the Syrian Kurdish forces gain control of the compound, and according to American officials, who supported these strikes, some of the prisoners were killed during them.[/size]
[size=45]General John Brennan, commander of the international coalition against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said, “The coalition has taken careful measures to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners, but when prisoners from ISIS militants took up arms, they became a major threat and then entered the clash and were killed by the Syrian Democratic Forces. and coalition air strikes.[/size]
[size=45]In a statement, the coalition stated that it had launched air strikes while providing the Syrian Democratic Forces, which carried out continuous operations, with intelligence information, since the start of the attack by ISIS militants on the prison on Thursday evening, in an attempt to free their followers detained there. The statement said that the gunmen used the prison guards' weapons to kill some of them after the siege began.[/size]
[size=45]The coalition described the current threat posed by ISIS as being "contained." In an effort to stem the prison strike, a US military official said, Apache attack aircraft carried out air strikes and low-altitude flights in a show of force.[/size]
[size=45]The New York Times indicates that the siege of Al-Ghwairan prison in Al-Hasakah, which houses thousands of ISIS and their families who were arrested after the collapse of the alleged caliphate of the organization, has been carefully planned.[/size]
[size=45]The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Kobani, said that ISIS mobilized sleeper cells and used suicide bombers in its plan to break the prison. He pointed out that the battle to regain control of the prison was hampered by the use of young detainees in the prison by ISIS militants as human shields, as these children were being held in a special rehabilitation department inside the prison complex, which was built as a training school.[/size]
[size=45]"The Syrian Democratic Forces hold the terrorist militants of Daesh responsible for any harm suffered by these children in prison," a statement by the Syrian Democratic Forces said.[/size]
[size=45]While ISIS trained young boys to carry weapons and called them “cubs of the caliphate,” it is unknown how many of these boys were former fighters and how many of them were in prison just because they are too old to stay in ISIS families’ camps.[/size]
[size=45]The Rojava Information Center, which is run by Syrian Kurdish activists, said Sunday that the battles are still continuing in the wing that remained controlled by ISIS from the prison, and that the Syrian Democratic Forces have not yet been able to regain control of it.[/size]
[size=45]The center said that 650 of the detainees were under 18 years of age. Noting that most of these children are Syrians, they also include Iraqis and 150 other non-Arab foreigners. As most of these children were brought to Syria by their parents to live in the country of the so-called caliphate declared by ISIS in 2014 between Iraq and Syria.[/size]
[size=45]Three years ago, with the fall of the last ISIS stronghold in the village of Baghouz in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces isolated many of these children from their living parents and placed them in detention. As for others, they were sent to prison when they reached the age of puberty and were not yet fit to remain in the detention camps for the families of ISIS militants.[/size]
[size=45]Letta Tyler, crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch, said she heard audio messages from a terrified teen who spoke of seeing dead bodies, apparently in the kitchen section of the ISIS-controlled prison.[/size]
[size=45]Tyler said he was saying, "There are a lot of people dead in front of me, I'm afraid I'll die like them at any time, I don't know what to do, please help me."[/size]
[size=45]Tyler says that the boy, who is of foreign nationality, has mentioned that the prison is being beaten from all sides. Noting that this situation would not have occurred if the foreign and European countries had agreed to withdraw their nationals of foreign militants and their children to their countries of origin.[/size]
[size=45]In Iraq, which also holds detainees from ISIS militants and is still in continuous battles and chases against its sleeper cells, the New York Times indicates that the government has strengthened its security measures on detention centers and prisons.[/size]
[size=45]For its part, the international coalition said that it is confident that the Hasaka attack will not pose a major threat to Iraq or the region, but it continues to evaluate the organization's capabilities and whether it can plan for any other similar attacks on detention centers in Iraq and Syria.[/size]
[size=45]It is noteworthy that more than 10,000 foreign detainees from the families of ISIS militants, most of them women and children, have been residing in detention camps in northeastern Syria, since the liberation of the village of Baghouz in 2019.[/size]
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