Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Monday YPG militants had emptied a jail holding Daesh prisoners in a part of Syria where Ankara is mounting an offensive, and that the prisoners there had been abducted.
Turkey launched a cross-border operation against the YPG militants in northeastern Syria last week, after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to withdraw forces from two posts in the area.
Turkey's stated objective is to clear its southern frontier region of the YPG, which it views as a terrorist organization , and form a "safe zone" 30 km (20 miles) into Syrian territory where it wants to settle millions of Syrian refugees. Ankara also pledged to take responsibility for Daesh militants within the "safe zone", but said it would not be accountable for others.
Speaking to reporters in Ankara on Monday, Akar said the YPG had emptied the only Daesh prison that Turkish forces had so far reached in the envisaged "safe zone" area, and that the inmates had already been removed.
"As you know, there is a prison issue on this Daesh topic. We are determined to show the utmost effort on these prisons. However, there was only one prison in our region, a Daesh prison," Akar said.
"When we went there, we saw that it had been emptied by the YPG and the Daesh militants there had been abducted. We determined this through photographs and film, talked to our counterpart, and will continue to do so," he added.
Trump tweeted on Monday that YPG might be freeing Daesh prisoners deliberately to lure U.S. troops back into the region. Escaped fighters could be "easily recaptured by Turkey or European Nations from where many came, but they should move quickly", Trump said.
Later on Monday, Turkish media broadcast footage of what it said was the prison emptied by the YPG in central Tel Abyad, along the Turkish border. The footage showed Turkish soldiers roaming through an empty building with jail cells built inside.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dismissed the reports on Sunday, saying that accounts of escapes by Daesh prisoners were "disinformation" aimed at provoking the West.
