US Officials Fear ISIS Prison Break Will Unleash ‘Terrorist Army’ On Middle East

U.S. officials warned Wednesday that thousands of ISIS members currently behind bars in Syria could end up making a break for it, Politico reported.

After the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) pushed hard into the territory of the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who currently hold 9,000 ISIS soldiers and 50,000 others in shoddily-secured detention centers, according to Politico. If the SNA attacks do not cease, an army-sized ISIS force might be let out of detention and cause a resurgence in the terrorist group, U.S. officials told the outlet.

“I usually hate this cliche, but this is the closest thing we have to a ticking time bomb,” a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told Politico. “If Turkey doesn’t get these attacks on the halted, we could have a massive jailbreak on our hands.”

The prisons were meant to be temporary as the SDF organizes the extradition of the fighters to their home countries, but their home countries are reluctant to repatriate them, according to Politico.

“This is essentially a terrorist army in detention,” Joseph Votel, retired general who led U.S. Central Command during the fight against ISIS from 2016 to 2019, told Politico. “I am very concerned.”

The Trump administration wiped out the vast majority of ISIS‘s presence in the Middle East during his tenure, according