Hundreds of ISIS Supporters Escape Camp in Syria; Media Begin to Acknowledge: Some Kurdish Forces Are a Problem

By Fox News. Hundreds of people affiliated with the Islamic State escaped a camp where they were being held on Sunday after Turkish forces approached the Kurdish-held town, Kurdish officials said.

About 950 ISIS-connected foreigners managed to leave the camp, located in Ain Eissa, roughly 20 miles south of the border, after detainees apparently attacked the camp’s guards and gates and fled, the Kurdish-led administration said in a statement.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said Turkish warplanes struck villages near the camp on Sunday. They didn’t provide the exact number of residents who fled the camp, but said clashes broke out between Turkey-backed Syrian fighters and Kurdish forces. . .

The Kurdish forces, who partnered with the U.S. in the fight against ISIS, say they may not be able to maintain detention facilities holding thousands of militants as they struggle to stem the Turkish advance.

Turkish forces have been pushing toward the town as part of their offensive against Kurdish-led forces — fighters which Turkey believes are terrorists because of their links to the insurgency in its southeast. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey won’t stop until the Syrian Kurdish forces withdraw at least 20 miles from the border. (Read more from “Hundreds of ISIS Supporters Escape Camp in Syria” HERE)

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Media Begin to Acknowledge: Some Kurdish Forces Are a Problem

By Breitbart. The mainstream media have begun to acknowledge that some Kurdish forces in the Turkey-Syria border region are a legitimate national security concern for Turkey, after a week of criticism of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal.

On Sunday, the New York Times published an article about how Kurdish forces, apparently out of spite, were no longer allowing U.S. forces to take control of detainees linked to the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) — though the Times headline cast the issue as America’s fault (“U.S. Forces Leave ‘High-Value’ ISIS Detainees Behind in Retreat From Syria”):

The Kurds refused, the officials said, to cooperate in permitting the American military to take out any more detainees from the constellation of ad hoc wartime detention sites for captive ISIS fighters. These range from former schoolhouses in towns like Ain Eissa and Kobani to a former Syrian government prison at Hasaka.

The prisons hold about 11,000 men, about 9,000 of them Syrian or Iraqi Arabs. About 2,000 come from some 50 other nations whose governments have refused to repatriate them.

Later in the article, the Times acknowledged: “The Turkish government sees the Kurdish military presence so close to its border as a serious security threat, because the Kurdish forces have close ties with a guerrilla group that has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey itself” (emphasis added). (Read more from “Media Begin to Acknowledge: Some Kurdish Forces Are a Problem” HERE)

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