The Syrian military has entered Hasakah governorate’s Al-Hawl Camp, which for around a decade housed tens of thousands of ISIS prisoners and their families including foreigners who entered Syria illegally to join the US-backed war against former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The deployment comes hours after Damascus announced a four-day ceasefire in the country’s north, and after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) pulled out of Al-Hawl Camp, citing attacks on the camp by government forces.

Since the Syrian army entered the camp on 20 January, thousands of ISIS members and their families have been released from Al-Hawl.

Videos on social media are showing government-affiliated troops arriving at Al-Hawl and allowing the prisoners to leave.

Over 25,000 people were held in the camp prior to the SDF withdrawal.

“It remains unclear how many detainees have fled and who currently controls the camp,” one of the camp’s overseers told Rudaw. The camp is made up of prisons that held ISIS fighters for years, as well as areas designated for internally displaced people.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, we are proud of this,” video footage showed one woman, dressed in a niqab, saying as she was leaving Al-Hawl.

Other footage shows what appeared to be hundreds of prisoners flooding out of the camp’s prison gates. According to reports, most of Al-Hawl has been emptied.

“Al-Hawl Camp witnessed organized smuggling operations of ISIS members and families after the withdrawal of SDF from the camp … after the International Coalition forces refused demands of SDF to interfere to stop the attacks by local armed groups of the Syrian government … Smuggling networks took advantage of the security chaos and withdrawal of SDF to smuggle detainees through several routes,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.

Al-Roj Camp and the Hasakah Prison also hold tens of thousands of ISIS militants. Government forces are nearby but have not yet entered those two prisons.

Yet Hasakah’s Al-Shaddadi Prison fell to government troops after the SDF said it could no longer hold the facility due to continuous attacks. The Kurdish group slammed the US coalition, located at a base two kilometers away, for ignoring repeated distress calls and requests for assistance.

According to Kurdish media, at least 1,500 ISIS members have escaped from Al-Shaddadi. Damascus claims a little over 100 ISIS members escaped, and accused the SDF of letting them out.

The Syrian government announced a four-day ceasefire on Tuesday evening. According to self-appointed Syrian President and ex-Al-Qaeda chief Ahmad al-Sharaa, a “joint understanding” has been reached regarding Hasakah Governorate.

Damascus has given the SDF and Kurdish authorities four days to develop plans for the integration of Kurdish forces and autonomous areas into the state.

“In the event of an agreement, the Syrian forces will not enter the centers of the cities of Hasakah and Qamishli and will remain on their outskirts, and the timetable and details of the peaceful integration of Hasakah Governorate, including the city of Qamishli, will be discussed later,” the Syrian Presidency said in a statement.

Sharaa had met with SDF chief Mazloum Abdi in Damascus on 19 January, but a Kurdish official told Rudaw the meeting was “not positive.”

The Syrian government and the SDF signed an agreement in March aimed at integrating the Kurdish group into Damascus’s forces. Both sides have been in disagreement about the deal’s implementation – particularly the SDF’s wish to remain under Kurdish command and enter the army as a bloc rather than dissolve and conscript, as Damascus is demanding.

The Kurdish group has also insisted on a decentralized system that would allow it a degree of autonomy in north and east Syria, as has been the case in recent years.

Over the last few days, the Syrian army has captured large swathes of northern and eastern Syria, including all the major oil fields and several strategic cities such as Raqqa. This came after heavy clashes between the SDF and the Syrian army in Aleppo – where Kurdish forces no longer have any significant presence.

The SDF and allied militias still hold Ain al-Arab (Kobane) in Aleppo, as well as the Hasakah and Qamishli city centers in Hasakah Governorate.