Kurdish-led force says armed group attacks Syria prison holding thousands of Islamic State members

Jan 19 (Reuters) – The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Monday that an “armed group” was attacking Shaddadi prison in Hasaka in Syria’s northeast where it said thousands of Islamic State militants were being held.

The SDF had said earlier in the day it was clashing with Syrian government forces near Al-Aqtan prison on the outskirts of the city of Raqqa that also held IS detainees. Raqqa was once the seat of a short-lived IS-declared “caliphate” in the region.

The SDF described the clashes as a “highly dangerous development” and said government forces seizing the prison “could have serious security repercussions that threaten stability and pave the way for a return to chaos and terrorism”.

Under a sweeping integration deal between the SDF and Damascus agreed on Sunday, responsibility for prisons housing IS detainees was meant to be transferred to the Syrian government.

After days of fighting with government forces, the autonomy-minded SDF, once the main U.S. allies in Syria, agreed on Sunday to withdraw from two Arab-majority provinces they had controlled for years, including oil fields.

Syrian government troops tightened their grip on Monday across a swathe of northern and eastern territory abruptly abandoned on Sunday by the SDF in a dramatic shift that consolidated President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s rule.

In the wake of the deal, government internal security forces and military police were setting up checkpoints and checking IDs in Raqqa. Security sources there said Raqqa had been cleared of SDF fighters overnight.

(Reporting by Jana Choukeir and Maya Gebeily; editing by Alex Richardson and Mark Heinrich)