The Islamic State (IS) group unleashed its biggest attack in Syria since the fall of its “caliphate” three years ago. More than 100 militants assaulted the main prison holding suspected extremists, sparking a battle with U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters that continued 24 hours later and left dozens dead on Friday. Across the border in Iraq, gunmen stormed an army barracks north of Baghdad before dawn Friday while soldiers inside slept, killing 11 before escaping — the deadliest attack in months on Iraq’s military.
The bold assaults suggest militants have been revitalized after maintaining a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Syria over the past few years. The group’s territorial control in Iraq and Syria was crushed by a years-long U.S.-backed campaign, but its fighters continued with sleeper cells that have increasingly killed scores of Iraqis and Syrians in past months. The attack in Syria targeted Gweiran Prison in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, the largest of around a dozen facilities run by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces holding suspected IS fighters. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 23 Kurdish security forces and prison guards were killed, along with 39 militants and five civilians. Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the attack was IS’s biggest since it lost its last shred of territory in Syria in 2019. The fighters were led by foreign militants, not Syrians, many of whom spoke in Iraqi dialect. “This is not a local operation,” he said.
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