UP to 20,000 prisoners have broken out of a Syrian ISIS detention camp the size of a city.
Between 15,000 and 20,000 detainees, including the families of jihadist fighters, are now at large after the mass breakout, according to US spies.
The sprawling Al-Hol camp held the radicalised families of terrorists, and experts had long warned that it was essentially a breeding ground for the next generation of ISIS fighters.
At its peak in 2019, the eastern Syria camp held more than 70,000 people, mainly families of jihadists.
Security at the camp collapsed completely last month after the Syrian government pushed out the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, who had guarded Al-Hol for years.
Dramatic videos showed ISIS brides setting fire to buildings and escaping as Kurdish guards and troops abandoned the site under attack by the Syrian army.
Shocking footage circulating on social media shows the camp in chaos as dozens of inmates flee, many in head-to-toe burqas.
Now US intelligence estimates that up to 20,000 inmates have broken out.
The Syrian government, led by former jihadist President Ahmed Sharaa, plans to monitor extremists and reintegrate them into society.
It blamed the chaos on SDF troops, claiming that the US-backed forces abandoned the camp during January attacks, leaving it unguarded for hours.
Sharaa’s government struggled to contain the camp because it is “limited by a lack of trained, qualified personnel”, according to US Defense Department report.
Damascus-based security analyst Alexander McKeever said: “They have some sort of very limited experience and infrastructure set up for this.
“But definitely not for 20,000 people and a significant portion of them being non-Syrian.”
Experts say the camp included ordinary civilians accidentally detained in the chaos at the end of Islamic State’s rule – up to a quarter of prisoners had no links to ISIS, according to a UN report.
But Western officials branded the detainees a “terror army in waiting”.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15976476/isis-detention-camp-escape-fears-terror-group-ranks-swell/