Troop pullout from Syria confirmed as affiliates of Islamic State flee camp.
DAMASCUS — Hundreds of family members linked to Islamic State militants escaped from a camp in northern Syria where fighting between Kurdish militias and Turkishbacked rebels is escalating, Kurdish officials and a war monitor reported.
About 785 foreigners affiliated with the Islamic State broke free on Sunday from the Ain Issa camp, near the northern city of alRaqqa, a Kurdish autonomous administration in northeastern Syria.
“The escape comes after shelling by (Turkishallied) mercenaries hit the camp. This represents support for the resurgence of Daesh,” the Kurdish authority said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The U.S. military was also unable to carry out a plan to transfer about five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of Kurdishrun wartime prisons before the Pentagon decided to move its forces out of northern Syria, according to two U.S. officials.
Turkey started in incursion into northern Syria on Wednesday, saying it is targeting Islamic State extremists and Kurdish militias. Ankara considers the Kurdish militias to be linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which is waging an insurgency within the country. Thousands of Islamic State families have been held in the Ain Issa camp that the Kurdishled Syrian Democratic Forces set up in 2016.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported that around 800 foreign members of Islamic State families fled the camp after Kurdish guards abandoned the site due to nearby fighting.
Residents in the area told Deutsche PresseAgentur that some of the escapees were heading to alRaqqa, a onetime stronghold of Islamic State.
Supported by air and artillery strikes, Turkey’s allied fighters were advancing against the Kurds in Ain Issa Sunday, the observatory said. The official Syrian news agency SANA reported Sunday that Syrian army units were moving to confront the Turkish offensive.
The observatory said that Kurdish forces and Russia reached a deal to allow Syrian government forces to enter the Kurdish towns of Manbij and Kobane.
Syria’s Kurds said Syrian government forces agreed Sunday to help them fend off Turkey’s invasion — a major shift in alliances that came after President Trump ordered all U.S. troops withdrawn.