Iraqi, Kurdish forces capable to prevent ISIS crossing attempts: US official

Layal Shakir

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi and Kurdish border guards are capable to prevent Islamic State (ISIS) members from crossing the Iraq-Syria borders, a US military official told Rudaw on Sunday as fighting raged for a fourth day in northeast Syria (Rojava) following a foiled plot by the militant group’s sleeper cells who sought to free their captured members from prison.

ISIS attempted to break thousands of its affiliates and members from Hasaka’s Ghweran prison on Thursday, marking the most significant offensive since the terror group’s so-called caliphate was defeated in Syria almost three years ago.

The violence has raised fears of ISIS re-emerging in Iraq as its activities are also on the rise in the country.

“The distance and the capability of the Iraqi border guards, the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army, there is enough security and enterprise to prevent any threat from them crossing into Iraq,” Director of the Military Advisory Group in Iraq for the US-led coalition Nick Duchich told Rudaw’s Ranja Jamal.

Duchich praised the SDF’s efforts in recapturing “several hundred” ISIS escapees as the terror group on Saturday claimed that around 800 of its members had broken free from Ghweran. 

The SDF on Sunday set a cordon around the prison. 

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Sunday expressed his concern regarding the situation in Rojava. 

Ghweran and al-Shaddadi prison in Hasaka hold an estimated number of 7,500 Syrian and foreign ISIS suspects, including children, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in 2020. Around 5,000 people are detained in Ghweran, which was formerly a school and is now controlled by the SDF. 

ISIS controlled swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territories in 2014 but it was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

At least 125 people, including ISIS members, civilians, and security forces have been killed in the violence since Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Sunday. 

A Kurdish official on Saturday blamed the recent ISIS attack on the international community’s failure to respond to the terror group’s threat as a global issue.

“The massive attack by dozens of Daesh [ISIS] members on Al-Hasakah prison and its repercussions are the result of the international community’s failure to shoulder its responsibilities towards this big and serious issue, which we consider to be an international problem,” the co-chair of Rojava’s foreign relations commission Abdulkarim Omar said in a tweet.

The terror group’s recent offensive comes as its attacks uptick in Iraq. Eleven Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ISIS attack in Diyala province on Friday. The terror group launched over 257 offensives, killing 387, and injuring 518 people, a Peshmerga official told Rudaw earlier this month.