Monitoring Desk
QAMISHLI: Syrian Kurdish-led forces boosted security on Tuesday, a day after foiling a deadly Daesh group attack on a prison, fearing that the militants will strike again, said a spokesman.
Syrian authorities on Monday declared a state of emergency in Raqqa, the militants’ former de facto capital in northern Syria, after shooters struck a security complex near a prison where fellow militants were detained.
One militant and six members of the Kurdish-led security forces were killed.
Farhad Shami, the spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said they had “declared a security alert” and security forces sweeping the region.
“We have information about possible Daesh attacks during end-of-year holidays,” the spokesman said, listing the northern Syrian cities of Qamishli, Raqqa, and Hasakah.
Security compound attack thwarted
Farhad Shami said that a new Daesh leader — who rein power after his predecessor was killed in October — wanted to maintain the group’s presence.
After the attack, the commander of SDF, Mazloum Abdi, had warned that “terrorist cells” were “preparing dangerous plans.”
The failed attack on Monday targeted a Kurdish security compound, which includes a prison of military intelligence housing hundreds of militants, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
Daesh claimed responsibility for the assault, saying two of its fighters had carried it out to avenge “Muslim prisoners” and female relatives of militants living in the Kurdish-administered Al-Hol camp.
Al-Hol, home to over fifty thousand people, is the largest camp for displaced people who fled after the SDF led the war that dislodged Daesh group militants from the last scraps of their Syrian territory in 2019.
It was the major militant attack on a prison since Daesh fighters launched their biggest attack in years in January when they assaulted the Ghwayran prison in Hasakah, the Kurdish-controlled city.
