(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. said Turkey has offered assurances that Islamic State fighters in the part of northern Syria occupied by Turkish forces are “under their control.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he received the information from his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, during a two-day meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels.
The gathering of NATO defense chiefs followed a Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria this month to clear out Kurdish forces who were allied to the U.S. and had been guarding Islamic State militants. The Turkish operation sparked concerns that the recruits for Islamic State, also known as ISIS, would slip free and re-emerge as a terrorist threat.
“I’ve spoken to the Turkish defense minister -- he informs me that all the ISIS prisoners in prisons in their area are under their control and, actually, he informed me that they’ve been able to recollect some of them,” Esper told reporters on Friday in Brussels. “So that’s good news.”
James Jeffrey, the U.S. envoy on the Syria conflict, has warned that more than 100 Islamic State militants have escaped from prisons in northern Syria while President Donald Trump says that most have been recaptured.
Turkey reached an agreement with Russia this week to secure a buffer zone in northeastern Syria. That has created an awkward political dilemma for NATO, whose 29 member countries include Turkey.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday evening that a “frank and open” discussion by the alliance’s defense ministers about the situation in northeastern Syria showed they had “different views.”
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