Nearly 100 Prisoners Escape ISIS Jail in Northern Syria

Around 95 captives have escaped an ISIS-run prison in northern Syria, a group monitoring the war said on Tuesday.

The estimated 95 prisoners who escaped an ISIS-run prison in al-Bab, about 20 miles from the Turkish border, include 30 Kurdish fighters, Syrian civilians, and fighters opposed to ISIS, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday. ISIS has put al-Bab on high alert, calling for residents to recapture the jail-breakers, the Observatory said, citing their sources in the town.

ISIS controls tracts of territory across northern Syria and runs its own prisons, courts and other facilities in what it describes as an Islamic caliphate extending into Iraq.

Al-Bab was also the scene of a fight over the weekend between mostly European ISIS fighters trying to escape to Turkey and Syrian ISIS fighters trying to stop them, the Observatory said, adding that nine ISIS fighters died.