Syria, 850 children trapped in the prison taken by Isis

The fate of hundreds of Syrian, Iraqi and many other nationalities, including Westerners, is hanging by a thread for four days trapped in a prison in north-eastern Syria which has been besieged by ISIS militants and still in these hours the scene of clashes between the jihadists barricaded inside and the local Kurdish forces supported by the United States.

    The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has raised the alarm for the presence of 850 minors, even as young as 12 years of age, in Gweiran prison, on the southern outskirts of the Syrian oil city of Hasaka, on the border with Iraq. In the prison that has been the scene since last Thursday of unprecedented armed clashes since Isis was declared "defeated" in 2019 by Kurds and Americans.

    A militia commando had managed in the night between Wednesday and Thursday to penetrate with a car bomb the perimeter of the overcrowded detention center, where thousands of suspects belonging to ISIS have been held for years.

    Hundreds of minors have been in one section since 2019, left in prison limbo waiting to be judged, repatriated to their respective countries, but who - according to humanitarian organizations - do everything they can not to recognize and welcome them.

    "We call for the immediate release of the minors," says UNICEF. "The risk that they may fall victim to clashes or be recruited by force increases as the fighting continues," the statement read.

    The National Observatory for Human Rights in Syria says that so far, despite the military efforts of Kurdish forces and the United States, one arm of the prison remains under the control of jihadist militiamen. And that the provisional toll of the bloody fighting is more than 150 killed, 102 of which among the ranks of ISIS, at least 25 among the Kurdish militiamen, and 7 civilians. But these are inaccurate figures and will have to be verified at the end of the slaughter.

    In these hours, the green light for the "final operation" by the Kurdish forces is expected: the aviation of the US-led anti-Isis Coalition continue to support the work of the Syrian PKK militias on the ground and from above, while news arrives of the surrender of "dozens" of jihadists who escaped from Thursday to Hasaka and its surroundings. Kurdish media report the killing by jihadists of at least five civilians, but there is no independent confirmation of this.

    The UN Office for Humanitarian Coordination (OCHA) has announced that thousands of inhabitants of the neighborhoods of Hasaka hit by the clashes have fled north. Kurdish forces have imposed a curfew throughout the city, whose inhabitants are in difficult humanitarian conditions due to theabsence of electricity and low winter temperatures.

    Meanwhile, Sonia Khush, director of the Syria program for Save the Children, an international humanitarian organization, said that "what we hear from Guweiran prison is deeply distressing. The news of children killed or injured is tragic and outrageous".