From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavranisi. This is the Daily.

Three years after the United States declared victory over the Islamic State, a well-organized

attack in northern Syria is raising questions about whether the terror group could be on

the cusp of a resurgence. My colleague, Jane Arath, traveled to the side of the battle.

It's Thursday, February 3rd. Jane, you've been in Syria reporting on an ISIS attack that

started about two weeks ago. Tell us how it began. Well, this was, first of all, really

the biggest confrontation between ISIS and the US and its allied forces since the fall

of the Islamic State in 2019. That's when ISIS lost the last of its territory and what

it called the caliphate. What happened was that news suddenly broke out that ISIS fighters

were attacking a prison complex in northeast Syria.

Live on a Middle East Bureau with more on this is more than 100 gunmen assaulted a prison

in north eastern Syria where some 3,000 ISIS militants were being held.

Kurdish forces were controlling the area, say a car bomb struck the prison gates as detainees

began to rise. It's a prison in this residential neighborhood in the middle of a city actually,

a city called Hasika, which holds suspected ISIS members.

It's a time dozens of militants staged a riot inside the prison to create a scene of chaos.

The attackers outside, which included gunmen and suicide bombers, were trying to break

out the prisoners inside. Many of the guards were being held hostage by ISIS, making it

difficult to liberate the complex. And it became apparent pretty quickly that this was

not one of those attacks that would be put down easily and everyone would move on.

We saw that the forces guarding the prison, those are the U.S. backed Kurdish-led forces

called the SDF for Syrian Democratic forces. We're struggling to defend it.

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