The U.S. military launched airstrikes in Syria in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces battling an attempted Islamic State prison break.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Friday that the United States “provided some airstrikes to support [SDF] as they deal with this particular prison break,” though he didn’t provide many details about them.
The attack targeted Gweiran Prison, which is located in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, and it’s the largest of roughly a dozen facilities run by Kurdish forces holding suspected Islamic State militants.
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The prison holds approximately 5,000 ISIS commanders and figures, according to Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the SDF, while Mazloum Abadi, the commander of the force, said that the militants mobilized “most of its sleeper cells” on this mission.
More than 100 militants were involved in the fight at the prison, which left dozens dead. While prisoners rioted and attempted to escape, a car bomb was detonated, and gunmen exchanged fire with security forces, Shami said.
Shami reported that 104 inmates have been recaptured, while it’s unclear exactly how many escaped. Twenty-eight ISIS attackers were killed, while seven Kurdish fighters died as well. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war opposition monitor, said the death toll was higher, at 67.
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Simultaneously, there was also an attack in Iraq by ISIS. Members of ISIS snuck into an army barracks before dawn and killed 11 people before escaping.
The scale of the attack, which is ISIS’s largest in years, could demonstrate a recent resurgence in ISIS’s capability and numbers. ISIS’s apparent revitalization comes months after the U.S. withdrew troops from Afghanistan, reducing the overall footprint in the Middle East.
