Syrian rebels break hundreds of inmates out of Aleppo prison

From The Telegraph.

Syrian rebels break hundreds of inmates out of Aleppo prison


Activists say rebel forces freed more than 300 prisoners in bloody firefight with regime troops who have been using prison as a military base

Syrian rebels have breached part of Aleppo's central prison, releasing several hundred inmates in a bloody firefight with regime troops, activists have reported.

The prison, which the rebels have been laying siege to for almost a year, has become a military base for the Syrian army but still has up to 4000 prisoners languishing in their cells, disease-riven and surviving on pitiful amounts of food.

Up to 300 prisoners were released in the operation, which was led by Jabhat al-Nusra, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, and Ahrar al-Sham, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The rebels were then forced to fall back when government troops launched a blistering counter-attack, dropping barrels filled with TNT from helicopters, activists in Aleppo told the Telegraph.

The counter-attack reportedly killed the Nusra commander that led the onslaught, who went by the name Saif Allah. Photos of his body laid on a stretcher circulated on Twitter.

Ahrar and Nusra have been laying siege to the prison since April of last year, periodically ramming suicide car bombs through its outer gates, and lobbing shells into the compound.

Thursday's push began when a bomber from Nusra blew himself up at the gates. Rebel fighters then swarmed in, fighting corridor by corridor to take over much of the compound.

Families and friends of prisoners waited anxiously for news on Thursday, afraid that the fighting might kill their loved ones inside, but hopeful that this was also their chance to be released.

"I have four nurses imprisoned there," a doctor living in an opposition held part of Aleppo told the Telegraph. "Their crime was caring for patients in field hospitals in Aleppo. I am praying to hear they have been freed."

Mohammed was an activist who was himself freed from a regime prison when rebels stormed his compound in northern Idlib province last year. Now in Turkey recovering from the torture - electric shocks, breaking of bones, lashings - he was subjected to during his incarceration, he said: "I have about 12 friends imprisoned in Aleppo jail. One is a university student who was arrested during a peaceful anti-government protest. I haven't seen or heard from him in 17 months but I know he is inside."

Human Rights Watch appealed last summer for the government to allow international inspectors into Aleppo prison after there were reports of terrible abuses inside.

The jail, from which government troops shell rebel parts of Aleppo, is a black hole of information.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent have tried to bring food rations to the prisoners and rescue those who have finished their sentences, often having to cross front lines to do so.

One Red Crescent member, who wished to remain anonymous, last year told the news site Syria Deeply of the desperate living conditions. Prisoners, they said, are suffering from overcrowding, and lack of food. With little water available, diseases, including scabies and tuberculosis, are rife.

An unknown number of prisoners have died from disease during the course of the siege, while others have been killed in their cells as a result of the fighting between the rebels and regime troops.

Unable to take them out, the victims have reportedly been buried in a mass grave inside the prison.