Iraqi and Syrian authorities working on plans to transfer thousands of IS group prisoners [Getty]
Iraq’s national security council approved on Monday evening the development of a plan to transfer Islamic State group prisoners from detention centres previously held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria. The plan envisions the formation of a security committee that will be tasked with overseeing the transfer operation of the detainees to neighbouring Iraq.
Iraqi authorities have said the move was “temporary” and purely based on a “security decision” after a ceasefire agreement saw government forces taking over much of the country’s northeast, including detention sites holding thousands of IS suspects and their families.
The United States, which had supported the Kurdish-led forces and has troops in the country, has held talks with Iraqi and Syrian officials to assist in the transfer.
Head of the US Counterterrorism Centre, Joe Kent, said he’d been in Baghdad over the last few days discussing their “continued fight to defeat ISIS”.
The US Central Command had said it had already moved some 150 of the group’s fighters from Hassakeh to a “secure location” in Iraq after Commander Brad Cooper told Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa the aim was to relocate some 7,000 members of the group.
US envoy Tom Barrack held a conversation with former Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani in which they discussed the situation in Syria and emphasised “the importance of maintaining a ceasefire and ensuring humanitarian assistance to those in need”.
Syrian authorities announced on Saturday the extension of the 18 January truce agreement by an additional 15 days amid mutual assurances of “no return to war”.
Despite the truce, at least three people were injured in renewed fighting between interim government forces and SDF-allied factions near Al-Jawadiyah district of northeastern Hassakeh, a strategic area that connects Derik to Qamishli.
One woman was also reported killed in the Kurdish-majority village of Sharbani, as local sources reported continued shelling carried out by armed factions allied with the Syrian government surrounding Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on Monday.
Meanwhile, the government’s consolidation of areas in the country’s northeast continues with the deployment of internal ministry units in Raqqa, Aleppo and Hassakeh.
Efforts are also underway to regularise the status of former SDF-affiliated individuals wishing to join state institutions, in line with an integration agreement agreed between the group and Damascus in March, state-run SANA reported.
Additional aid convoys are likewise being sent to areas in Hassakeh and Aleppo, including in Ain al-Arab.