RAQQA, Syria, Jan 24, (AP): Syrian government forces took control Friday of a prison housing members of the Islamic State group in the north of the country, after hundreds of Kurdish fighters who were guarding the facility evacuated the area as part of a recent deal. Syria’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the government’s prisons authority is now in charge of al-Aqtan prison, north of the northern city of Raqqa, and that the files of the detainees are being reviewed.

Al-Aqtan is the second prison to come under government control after being abandoned by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Syrian troops entered Shaddadeh prison on Monday near the border with Iraq, from where 120 IS detainees managed to flee amid the chaos. Most of them have been recaptured, state media said.

Syria's interim government signed an agreement last March with the SDF for it to hand over territory and to eventually merge its fighters with government forces. In early January, a new round of talks failed to make progress over the merger, leading to renewed fighting between the two sides. A new version of the accord was signed over the weekend, and a four-day ceasefire declared on Tuesday.

The move into al-Aqtan prison comes two days after the U.S. military said that it has started transferring some of the 9,000 IS detainees held in more than a dozen detention centers in northeast Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in northeast Syria. The SDF was the main force fighting IS in Syria over the past decade, and in March 2019 captured the last sliver of land that the extremists held.

During the battles against IS, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the al-Hol camp, which government forces took control of on Wednesday. The capture of al-Aqtan prison came after government forces surrounded it from all sides earlier this week during a two-week offensive against the SDF.

Raqqa governor Abdul-Rahman Salama said there are up to 2,000 detainees at al-Aqtan, but it wasn't immediately clear how many of them are linked to IS. Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Abdul-Qader Tahan visited the prison on Friday to see the conditions of the detention center and the detainees, state television reported.