UNICEF races to protect kids held at uprising site

BEIRUT — Children held in a prison in northeast Syria that witnessed 10 days of fighting between U.S.-backed fighters and Islamic State group militants are living in “incredibly precarious” conditions and they should not have been there in the first place, the U.N. children’s agency said Sunday.

UNICEF added that the agency is ready to help support a new facility in Syria’s northeast to take care of the most vulnerable children, some of whom are as young as 12. Its statement came a day after a visit by one of its teams to the prison in the northeastern city of Hassakeh.

The UNICEF team said the children have lived in dire conditions at the detention center for years and in January “witnessed and survived heightened violence” in and around the prison.

The visit came two days after Islamic State’s top leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed in a U.S. raid on his safehouse in northwestern Syria. President Biden said al-Qurayshi had been responsible for the prison assault.

More than 3,000 inmates, of which some 600 are children, are held at the Hassakeh prison, known as Gweiran or al-Sinaa.

“Despite some of the basic services now in place, the situation of these children is incredibly precarious,” Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF’s Syria representative, said in the statement.

While boys were held separately from adults, the groups mixed when militants stormed the prison in a jailbreak on Jan. 20. Some inmates escaped, while others including child detainees were taken hostage in the ensuing battle.

Nylund said UNICEF is working to provide safety and care for them while calling on all stakeholders to urgently find long-term solutions in the best interests of the children.

At a press conference on Jan. 31, the U.S.backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had retaken control of the prison and confirmed that 77 prison employees, 40 Kurdish fighters and four civilians were killed, alongside 374 Islamic State detainees and attackers. The SDF provided no breakdown of the dead detainees, or how many of them were children.

Nylund said UNICEF calls for the immediate release of children in all detention centers across northeastern Syria and for handing them over to child protection agencies.