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QAMISHLI, Syria — Youngster detainees at a jail in northeast Syria that was attacked by ISIS two weeks in the past are injured, hungry and thirsty, in response to the primary worldwide assist employee to see them because the siege.
“They simply managed to say a number of phrases: that they’re hungry, they want water, they want medical care,” stated the official, Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF Syria’s consultant, who visited the Sinaa prison on Saturday. Jail authorities allowed him to view the youngsters by way of small, barred home windows within the metal cell doorways however to not communicate with them.
The makeshift jail, within the metropolis of Hasaka, that was attacked on Jan. 20 by ISIS suicide bombers and gunmen held about 4,000 suspected ISIS fighters and about 700 youngsters. Fears over the youngsters’ security grew after the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is in control of this breakaway area of Syria, stated that ISIS gunmen had used a few of them as human shields throughout the assault.
Lots of of inmates have been killed over 10 days because the Syrian Democratic Forces and American ground forces fought to retake management of the jail from the terrorist group.
The S.D.F. stated it misplaced 40 fighters and 77 guards and different jail employees. But it surely has not revealed particulars of the youngsters’ fates and has barred entry to journalists — and, till Saturday, to help organizations, like UNICEF and the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross, which is generally the primary to go to detainees.
{A photograph} supplied by UNICEF to The New York Instances confirmed the youngsters, their identities shielded, sitting barefoot on a damaged concrete and dust ground with skinny mattresses lined finish to finish. Daylight by way of excessive home windows illuminated what regarded like blackened partitions. A number of the boys had blankets wrapped round their shoulders.
“We noticed a whole bunch of boys,” Mr. Nylund informed The Instances on Sunday. “Fairly skinny and in want of lots of providers, together with medical assist.”
He stated that S.D.F. officers informed him on Saturday that there have been 700 detained minors — the identical quantity they gave earlier than the jail siege — and that he was proven “six or seven” cells, every with about 30 youngsters. Mr. Nylund estimated that the youngest prisoner he noticed was about 15.
He stated that the odor of smoke nonetheless hung within the air and that the jail’s partitions have been scorched, however that “they managed to get the fundamentals in place,” he stated, referring to the blankets and mattresses.
“But it surely’s been a conflict zone,” Mr. Nylund added.
The youngsters have been held within the makeshift jail since they have been separated from girls and youthful youngsters after ISIS fell in 2019, and none have been earlier than a decide since being detained.
The S.D.F. has stated that the boys’ ties to the Islamic State make them harmful, and that among the older ones have been educated to combat, whereas human rights organizations contemplate them victims, youngsters taken to the Islamic State by way of no alternative of their very own.
Prior to now three years, few assist organizations have been given even a glimpse of the youngsters, because the S.D.F. has restricted entry to them.
“We have now been engaged on getting entry for the final 12 months plus,” Mr. Nylund stated of the Sinaa jail. “We have now not spoken intimately to a single considered one of them.”
Last week, The Times saw two bodies that gave the impression to be these of youngsters amongst different our bodies discovered within the neighborhood across the jail the place residents reported seeing ISIS attackers throughout the siege. Jail clothes was additionally among the many stays. About 200 ISIS fighters had attacked the jail to attempt to escape detained comrades, and it was not clear whether or not the boys had escaped with grownup prisoners or been taken hostage by them.
Mazlum Kobani, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, informed The Instances {that a} “very small quantity” of the youngsters had been killed within the operation to retake the jail and to arrest ISIS fighters.
Human Rights Watch said that two detainees had informed it that they noticed youngsters killed throughout the preventing for the jail, and that one other detainee described how a baby bled to dying in his arms.
An S.D.F. official informed The Instances final week that the boys had been moved from the Sinaa jail to security in a more recent facility, however Mr. Nylund, the UNICEF official, stated he noticed them in the identical place the place they have been held earlier than the assault.
“We have now no data,” an S.D.F. spokesman, Ferhad Shami, stated on Sunday when requested in regards to the discrepancy.
Mr. Nylund stated UNICEF hoped to first present assist to the youngest prisoners and to those that have been sick or wounded. After that, he stated, the U.N. group will attempt to set up case information for the youngsters, with the goal of repatriating foreigners to 3rd nations. Most nations have refused to repatriate prisoners or households in detention camps from this area of Syria.
“We’ll do it on the situation that we have now steady entry as a result of until we do, we’re getting used,” Mr. Nylund stated in an unusually blunt remark in regards to the lack of entry provided by officers keen to indicate they’re working with worldwide organizations, however much less prepared to allow them to in.
“Let’s see that there’s an precise willingness to take this to the following degree as a result of, so far, we have now not seen that this has really occurred,” he stated.
UNICEF said in a statement announcing the visit that the youngsters must be transferred to the care of kid safety companies and that foreigners must be repatriated to their dwelling nations.
“Youngsters related to and recruited by armed teams ought to at all times be handled as victims of battle,” it stated.
