Fate of released Daesh prisoners unknown: Local sources

By Mohamad Misto, Levent Tok and Selen Temizer

ANKARA (AA) - The fate of hundreds of Daesh terrorists released in a swap deal with the YPG/PKK terrorist organization remains unknown, local sources said Monday.

Nearly 300 Daesh terrorists were taken to towns across northern and eastern Syria in territory controlled by the YPG/PKK, with no further information available on their later whereabouts.

The YPG/PKK terrorist group offered to transfer Daesh members in Syria and their families into neighboring Turkey.

A U.S.-brokered deal was reached last month between the YPG/PKK and Daesh terrorists in the town of Bagoz in the eastern Deir ez-Zor province.

According to Anadolu Agency reporters in the area, the deal allows Daesh members and their families to stay in YPG/PKK camps in Syria if they wish.

Daesh members who do not want to stay in the camps were promised alternative routes, including into the Euphrates Shield Operation zone and Afrin -- which were liberated following Turkish military campaigns -- or into areas controlled by the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Under the deal, the YPG/PKK will provide a special travel document to Daesh members seeking to leave the camps, the correspondents said.

With this document, Daesh terrorists and their families will be able to reside in territories occupied by YPG/PKK.

Furthermore, injured Daesh members will be treated in hospitals held by the YPG/PKK and will be discharged within two months.

The Daesh terrorist group currently controls only two percent of territory in Syria.

The U.S.-backed YPG/PKK terrorist group, meanwhile, controls some 28 percent of Syrian territory and some 70 percent of the country’s oil fields.

The Assad regime controls some 60 percent of the country whereas the armed anti-regime and opposition groups hold only roughly 10 percent.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed or displaced in the conflict, mainly by regime airstrikes targeting opposition-held areas.