Four IS fighters involved in the attack on a prison in the Syrian city of Hasakah are Belgians. The federal prosecutor’s office confirms this, after reporting about this in the newspaper Le Soir. However, the Belgian authorities have no information about the current status of the men.
The Belgians were held in prison in northeastern Syria when the Islamic State terror group carried out a large-scale attack on January 20. They are part of the twelve Foreign Terrorist Fighters that were detained by the Syrian Democratic Forces in the semi-autonomous region of Rojava.
“We are still waiting for reliable and confirmed information from our Belgian and foreign partners about the status of the four men,” the OCAD, the coordinating body for threat assessment, told Le Soir. “It’s a war zone, so analyzing information takes time.”
Before the attack, Hasakah prison held between 3,500 and 5,000 IS fighters from more than 20 countries. Dozens of jihadists were able to escape during the attack, which also left more than 300 dead. It was the largest IS operation since the fall of the caliphate in 2019.
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