U.S. Troops Join Fight to Dislodge Islamic State From Syrian Prison

As many as 200 U.S. soldiers are involved in a fight alongside Kurdish-led forces to regain control of a Syrian prison attacked by Islamic State fighters, U.S. defense officials said, in the most serious test in years for the country’s small American military contingent.

The attempted prison break in the city of Hasakah was the worst attack by Islamic State in the nearly three years since the group lost control of its last territorial foothold in Syria in 2019. In fighting that has raged for almost a week, more than 100 people have been killed, and some 850 children who had been held in the prison have been trapped during the violence.

As the fighting entered its seventh day on Wednesday, officials with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said they continued a building-by-building sweep of the prison grounds in an attempt to regain full control of the facility. Islamic State members remained surrounded in at least one building inside the complex, according to U.S. and SDF officials.

The SDF said Wednesday that 1,000 Islamic State fighters have surrendered during the fighting. Islamic State claimed to have freed 800 people from the prison but the SDF denied that assertion. Some 200 people were involved in the initial attack on the prison, which involved suicide bombers and a revolt inside the facility, the SDF has also said.

The intense fighting resulted in the biggest U.S. combat deployment in Syria in years. U.S. officials said 100 to 200 U.S. troops were part of a response that also includes airstrikes, surveillance and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the heaviest vehicle at the disposal of the U.S. forces in Syria.

American soldiers have used the Bradleys to create specific pathways within Hasakah, and fired on those pathways, defense officials said. The deployed troops are a significant part of the roughly 900 U.S. soldiers who are stationed in Syria supporting Kurdish-led Syrian militias in their fight to eradicate Islamic State.

The U.S. hasn’t participated in negotiations with Islamic State members inside the prison, but rather has advisers with the SDF forces leading those talks, U.S. officials said.

“The anti-Daesh fight continues & we are #StrongerTogether,” the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq and Syria, tweeted Wednesday.

The SDF said just after midnight Wednesday that over the last two days it had freed 23 people who had been taken hostage by Islamic State, including prison staff and others.

As the battle wears on, concern is growing for the fate of the 850 children as young as 12 held in the prison and trapped with Islamic State fighters who are still in control of a section of the facility. Many of the children are boys who were detained in 2019 after the fall of Islamic State’s last territorial enclave in Syria, according to the charity Save the Children.

The U.N. children’s agency Unicef said late Tuesday that it was concerned about reports that children trapped in the prison may have been forced to participate in the fighting between prisoners and security forces and reports that some had been killed.

“These children should never have been held in military detention in the first place. The violence they are subjected to may amount to war crimes,” said Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

Some 45,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the neighborhoods around the prison, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.