Teenage Inmates in Syria Lack Foodstuff and Medication, Help Group Claims

QAMISHLI, Syria — Youngster detainees at a jail in northeast Syria that was attacked by ISIS two weeks in the past are hurt, hungry and thirsty, according to the first intercontinental assist worker to see them due to the fact the siege.

“They just managed to say a few text: that they are hungry, they have to have drinking water, they want health care care,” explained the official, Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF Syria’s consultant, who visited the Sinaa jail on Saturday. Prison authorities permitted him to see the children as a result of smaller, barred home windows in the metal cell doorways but not to speak with them.

The makeshift jail, in the city of Hasaka, that was attacked on Jan. 20 by ISIS suicide bombers and gunmen held about 4,000 suspected ISIS fighters and about 700 youngsters. Fears over the teenagers’ security grew soon after the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is in demand of this breakaway area of Syria, claimed that ISIS gunmen had made use of some of them as human shields throughout the assault.

Hundreds of inmates were killed above 10 times as the Syrian Democratic Forces and American ground forces fought to retake manage of the jail from the terrorist team.

The S.D.F. claimed it dropped 40 fighters and 77 guards and other jail personnel. But it has not revealed specifics of the teenagers’ fates and has barred accessibility to journalists — and, right until Saturday, to assist corporations, like UNICEF and the Global Committee of the Crimson Cross, which is typically the very first to pay a visit to detainees.

A photograph supplied by UNICEF to The New York Periods confirmed the teenagers, their identities shielded, sitting barefoot on a damaged concrete and dust floor with skinny mattresses lined conclude to end. Daylight by means of high windows illuminated what looked like blackened walls. Some of the boys had blankets wrapped about their shoulders.

“We noticed hundreds of boys,” Mr. Nylund explained to The Instances on Sunday. “Quite skinny and in need to have of a whole lot of companies, which includes medical guidance.”

He explained that S.D.F. officials told him on Saturday that there ended up 700 detained minors — the exact same quantity they gave ahead of the prison siege — and that he was demonstrated “six or seven” cells, each and every with about 30 small children. Mr. Nylund believed that the youngest prisoner he saw was about 15.

He stated that the odor of smoke even now hung in the air and that the prison’s walls were being scorched, but that “they managed to get the fundamentals in place,” he said, referring to the blankets and mattresses.

“But it’s been a war zone,” Mr. Nylund included.

The adolescents have been held in the makeshift prison because they had been separated from women of all ages and young small children right after ISIS fell in 2019, and none have been in advance of a judge since being detained.

The S.D.F. has explained that the boys’ ties to the Islamic Point out make them perilous, and that some of the older ones have been properly trained to struggle, when human rights organizations contemplate them victims, youngsters taken to the Islamic Condition by no alternative of their own.

In the past three several years, handful of aid corporations have been given even a glimpse of the young adults, as the S.D.F. has restricted entry to them.

“We have been performing on having entry for the previous year furthermore,” Mr. Nylund claimed of the Sinaa prison. “We have not spoken in element to a single a person of them.”

Very last 7 days, The Periods observed two bodies that appeared to be these of young adults among the other bodies identified in the neighborhood around the prison where by people described looking at ISIS attackers through the siege. Prison clothing was also amid the stays. About 200 ISIS fighters had attacked the prison to try out to split out detained comrades, and it was not obvious no matter if the boys had escaped with adult prisoners or been taken hostage by them.

Mazlum Kobani, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, explained to The Situations that a “very small number” of the youngsters experienced been killed in the procedure to retake the jail and to arrest ISIS fighters.

Human Rights Check out explained that two detainees had advised it that they saw kids killed during the battling for the jail, and that a different detainee explained how a child bled to demise in his arms.

An S.D.F. official told The Periods very last 7 days that the boys experienced been moved from the Sinaa prison to safety in a newer facility, but Mr. Nylund, the UNICEF official, explained he observed them in the exact put the place they have been held before the attack.

“We have no info,” an S.D.F. spokesman, Ferhad Shami, claimed on Sunday when questioned about the discrepancy.

Mr. Nylund said UNICEF hoped to to start with present assist to the youngest prisoners and to people who have been unwell or wounded. Immediately after that, he claimed, the U.N. business will attempt to build scenario data files for the small children, with the aim of repatriating foreigners to third international locations. Most nations have refused to repatriate prisoners or people in detention camps from this location of Syria.

“We will do it on the affliction that we have steady obtain for the reason that except we do, we are getting utilized,” Mr. Nylund stated in an unusually blunt comment about the lack of entry presented by officers eager to display they are operating with worldwide corporations, but much less keen to enable them in.

“Let’s see that there is an actual willingness to consider this to the following degree because, to date, we have not observed that this has really took place,” he claimed.

UNICEF stated in a statement asserting the go to that the little ones should be transferred to the treatment of little one security agencies and that foreigners really should be repatriated to their property international locations.

“Children connected with and recruited by armed groups need to normally be dealt with as victims of conflict,” it claimed.