Kurdish forces found around 20 corpses of their fighters killed by the Islamic State group on Friday (January 28th) in the prison under attack in northern Syria, according to an NGO, while the Kurds are calling on the last entrenched jihadists to surrender.
Read alsoSyria: Kurdish forces track jihadists after prison attack
The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheading the fight against IS in Syria, said on Wednesday it had regained control of Ghwayran prison -- stormed by jihadists on January 20. --, ending six days of intense fighting, but search operations continued.
More than 250 dead
According to the OSDH, which is based in the UK but has an extensive network of sources in Syria, the SDF have found the bodies of 18 of their fighters and Kurdish police.
Separately overnight, seven jihadist fighters were killed in an airstrike in an area near the prison by the US-led anti-jihadist coalition which aided Kurdish forces to regain control of Ghwayran, according to the same source.
Read alsoSyria: the Kurds take back a prison six days after a jihadist assault
More than 250 people have been killed since January 20: 180 jihadists, 73 Kurdish fighters and police and seven civilians, according to the OSDH.
For the Observatory, the toll is likely to increase as more bodies are found and as many members of the Kurdish forces have been seriously injured.
If the Kurdish forces have regained control of the prison and many jihadists have surrendered, members of the IS are still hiding there, refusing to admit defeat.
Dozens of jihadists without food for a week are holed up in the northern part of the prison, "
difficult to target from the air or to access by land
", according to the OSDH.
"
The military forces believe that they will eventually surrender when they can't bear to be hungry anymore
," the director of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP on Friday.
Read alsoSyria: tense situation between Kurdish forces and jihadists in a prison
According to an FDS military source, these jihadists would be "
nearly 60
", holed up "
in a basement and on the floor above
".
“
We call on them to surrender
,” he said, adding that if they refused, the Kurdish forces would resort to a “
military
” solution.
But anonymous sources cited by the OSDH believe on the contrary that the jihadists "
have pledged allegiance to IS until death and that they will refuse to surrender
".
