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U.S.-led coalition forces launched airstrikes as their Syrian allies battled to regain control of the area on the ground, the coalition said in a statement. Coalition forces used Hellfire missiles and larger munitions and strafing runs by Apache helicopters, a coalition official said.
The attack began Thursday night, as the two car bombs rocked Hasakah and scores of militants swarmed the prison complex.
Prisoners responded by beating their way out into the corridors, officials said, overpowering their guards and killing several, before pouring out into the freezing prison yard.
“Many Daesh detainees seized arms from prison guards whom they murdered and subsequently engaged SDF quick reaction forces,” said Maj. Gen. John W. Brennan, Jr., the coalition’s commander, using an Arabic name for the Islamic State.
The Hasakah prison, once a school building, now houses roughly 3,000 prisoners, most of them captured in the final weeks of the battle to retake the final sliver of what the Islamic State group had called its caliphate.
The region’s leaders routinely appeal for help from the international community. They point out that many of the detainees are foreign and that the local administration cannot bear the burden of holding them alone.
Shami said Sunday the prison complex was mostly back under SDF control, but some prisoners remained holed up in the facility’s north wing. It was unclear whether all prisoners had been accounted for.
The prison building has been badly damaged by car bombs and airstrikes, Syrian and coalition officials said.
“Detainees who did not participate in the attack will be secured, with more details to be announced as the SDF completes its operations in the area,” Brennan said.
The size of the attack caught the SDF by surprise, and suggested that the militants, thought to be largely defeated, might have reestablished more advanced fighting capabilities than previously known, For days, they have used snipers, grenades and suicide belts to hold their ground as families stream out of the area amid the din of battle.
On a visit to the Hasakah prison in 2019, The Washington Post found parlous conditions. Cells were overcrowded and children were detained among adults. Some men sat for hours in tight circles, speaking among themselves and avoiding eye contact with prisoners around them.
U.S. officials say some prisoners have taken on leadership roles among their cellmates, and continue to preach the fundamentalist group’s ideology.
“Attacking the detention facility was a top ISIS priority for more than a year,” said Ned Price, a State Department spokesman. The assault, he said, now highlights the “urgent need” for countries to repatriate, rehabilitate and, where appropriate, prosecute their nationals.
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