UNLEASHED BEASTS
Turkey ‘makes clear attempt’ to free thousands of ISIS jihadis as warplanes hit hellhole prisons where bloodthirsty killers are caged, Kurds say
TURKEY is making a “clear attempt” to help thousands of maniacal ISIS inmates escape by bombing and shelling Kurd run prisons in Syria, it's claimed.
Authorities in northern Syria said jails holding "the most dangerous criminals from more than 60 nationalities" are being deliberately targeted as part of the Turkish onslaught against Kurdish strongholds.
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A senior official Sinam Mohamad told reporters prisons, including the notorious Chirkin hellhole, have been struck by Turkish shelling, calling it "a clear attempt" to help inmates escape.
There are believed to be 70,000 die-hard jihadis locked up following the collapse of the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq last year.
This attack will definitely reduce and weaken the guarding system for those Daesh [ISIS]militants in the prisons
Kurdish official Badran Jia Kurd
Ms Mohamad said no dangerous prisoners have so far escaped,.
But she warned as well as the deliberate bombing, Kurdish troops guarding the inmates were increasingly being diverted off to fend off the Turkish invaders.
She said: "If the situation becomes more offensive, either we will have to guard the camps or defend ourselves.”
Turkish operation so far:
- US President Donald Trump pulls back American troops from northeastern Syria
- Syrian Kurds, allies who supported the US in the fight against ISIS, are left vulnerable to a military onslaught after being abandoned
- Turkey launches ground and air assault against Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria on Wednesday, October 9
- Initial air strikes hit the border town of Ras al Ain
- Turkish defence bosses say jets and artillery struck 181 targets east of the Euphrates River since the incursion started
- At least eight people - three Kurds and five civilians - are killed and dozens have been wounded
Another senior Kurdish official warned d ISIS jihadists could break out of prisons in northeast Syria as fighting intensifies between Kurdish-led forces and Turkey.
Badran Jia Kurd told Reuters the number of security forces guarding the militants will dwindle as Turkish forces step up an offensive they launched at the border on Wednesday.
US officials have worried Islamic State detainees would seize on such an opportunity for a prison break.
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The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) hold thousands of the militants in prisons and tens of thousands of their relatives in camps, many of them foreigners.
With the Kurdish YPG militia at its forefront, the SDF defeated jihadists across much of north and east Syria with US air and ground support.
"This attack will definitely reduce and weaken the guarding system for those Daesh militants in the prisons," Jia Kurd said, using the Arabic acronym for IISIS
"This could lead to their escape or to behaviours that may get out of the control of the security forces," added Jia Kurd, adviser to the Kurdish-led authority in the SDF region.
"The number of forces guarding the prisons is reduced the more the battles intensify. This poses a grave danger."
'Bloodthirsty caliphate could rise again'
Meanwhile a Four-Star US general Joesph Votel, who led the war on terror in the region, fears thousands of jihadi prisoners could now break out of SDF jails to take up arms again.
The retired military man's warnings come after the US pulled troops out of Syria on Monday and as the Turkish military pounded more than 181 Kurdish targets.
Votel wrote in there's now a genuine threat to "rapidly destabilise" Syria’s northeast where "ISIS’s physical caliphate was only recently defeated."
He added: "Nearly 2,000 foreign fighters, about 9,000 Iraqi and Syrian fighters, and tens of thousands of ISIS family members are being held in detention facilities...in areas under SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) control.
'The SDF has already stated that it will have to fortify defence mechanisms along the Syrian-Turkish border, leaving ISIS detention facilities and encampments with little to no security.
"This is particularly troubling, given that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, recently called on supporters to break fighters out of these facilities.
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MOST READ IN NEWS
A US official said the US military took custody of two high-profile British ISIS militants from a cell dubbed “The Beatles”.
London-born Alexanda Kotey, 35, and British national El Shafee Elsheikh, 31, have been in custody since being seized in Syria in February last year.
But they now face being extradiated to the US and could face the death penalty.
The pair were captured by Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and have been in custody ever since.
Their two “Beatle” colleagues — including 'Jihadi John' Mohammed Emwazi — were both killed fighting for ISIS.
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Yesterday, it was announced that Kotey and Elsheikh have been placed in US custody and moved out of Syria to a "secure location".
Before they were moved out, Elsheikh made a lame apology for his part in the beheading of British aid worker David Haines.
He told, which had travelled out to Syria with Mr Haines' daughter, Samantha, that he had no "problem with apologising,
Donald Trump described the pair, who have been linked to a series of hostage beheadings, as the "worst of the worst".
The pair have been stripped of their British citizenship and the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute them in the UK.
But US officials suspect both men "participated in the detention, exploitation and execution of Western detainees".
They could face the death penalty if found guilty in a US court.
Brit ISIS terrorists known as ‘The Beatles’ face death penalty as pair set to be extradited to US to face court
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