AMMAN, Jan 21 (Reuters) – The rapid collapse of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast of the country this week triggered uncertainty over the security of around a dozen prisons and detention camps that they had been guarding, where more than 10,000 Islamic State members and thousands more women and children with ties to the group are being held.
Here is an overview of some of the most important prisons and camps holding IS-linked people in northeast Syria:
HASAKAH PRISONS UNDER SDF CONTROL
The two main prisons in Hasakah province are the Ghwayran and Panorama prisons, where thousands of battle-hardened IS fighters are held. Ghwayran, which was a school before being refurbished into a jail, holds around 4,000 inmates. Other prisons hold adolescent and juvenile boys, some of whom were born in Syria to parents who travelled to join IS.
Military personnel from a U.S.-led coalition secure the prison’s outer perimeters and Kurdish forces maintain control inside the prison.
Reuters was granted rare access to one of those prisons in 2025 and spoke to detainees from Britain, Russia and Germany.
Other detention centres are located in the cities of Qamishli and Malikiyah, which – like Hasakah city – remain under Kurdish control.
PRISONS NOW UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL
The Syrian government has taken over some of the other prisons holding IS detainees.
One of them is Shaddadi, which is in the Hasakah countryside. The SDF said it lost control of the prison as Syrian troops approached and that inmates escaped. Syria’s government said the SDF abandoned its posts and released some 200 IS inmates, saying Syrian troops subsequently recaptured most of them.
A U.S. official confirmed that Syrian troops recaptured many of the 200 escapees, describing them as low-level IS members.
Another facility that came under Syrian government control is Al-Aqtan, in the neighbouring province of Raqqa.
DETENTION CAMPS
Tens of thousands of civilians who fled IS’s last strongholds as the group lost territory over the last decade were also rounded up by Kurdish security forces and held in two main camps, known as the al-Hol and Roj camps.
As of 2024, al-Hol held 44,000 people, virtually all of them women and children. Most of them are Syrians or Iraqis, but Westerners also live there in a separate annex.
Those held at the Roj camp also include some Westerners such as Shamima Begum, a British-born woman who joined IS. A resident of Roj told Reuters in 2025 that women from Tanzania and Trinidad also lived in the camp.
Kurdish forces said they were forced to pull out of al-Hol as government troops approached. On Wednesday, Reuters reporters saw dozens of children and women in black pressing up against the camp fence as Syrian government forces looked on.
It was not immediately clear what the status of the Roj camp was.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Maya Gebeily)
Comments