At least 750 Isis affiliates escape Syria camp after Turkish shelling

At least 750 people with suspected links to Islamic State have reportedly fled a displacement camp in north-east Syria, local officials have said, raising fears that the Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in the area could lead Isis to regain strength amid the chaos.

The news came at the same time the US ordered all 1,000 US troops to withdraw “as safely and quickly as possible” from the region after learning that the Turkish operation was likely to extend further than Ankara’s proposed 20-mile (32km) “safe zone” on the border between the two countries.

The bloody conflict between Turkey and the formerly US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters “gets worse by the hour”, the US defence secretary, Mark Esper, said on Sunday in a pre-taped interview.

While US forces made preparations to pull out, the mayhem in Kurdish-held north-east Syria intensified, with reports that Turkish backed militias had summarily executed several civilians, including a female Kurdish politician.

On Sunday night Syrian TV said government troops were moving to the north to confront the Turkish offensive, potentially setting up direct clashes between Turkey and the Assad regime.

The 249 women and 700 children formerly part of the “caliphate” were held in a secure annexe at the Ain Issa camp. They began to riot and scared away the guards after Turkish shelling struck close to the area on Sunday, Abdulkader Mwahed, the joint president for humanitarian affairs in the Kurdish-held part of Syria, said in a statement.

Jelal Ayaf, the co-chair of the camp’s management, said sleeper cells within the civilian section also emerged during the riot, attacking the remaining guards who had not already fled the shelling.

The UK-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number to have escaped at 100, publishing pictures of men, women in black niqabs and small children running through yellow scrubland. It was not clear whether the pictures showed Isis families or civilian residents of the camp fleeing the Turkish attack. No Isis men were held at the facility.

Save the Children’s staff members on the ground reported no foreign women were left at the camp and that masked men on motorbikes were circling the perimeter.

The camp was home to a total of about 13,000 people, including three suspected British orphans and a notorious British recruiter for Isis, Tooba Gondal.

Turkey launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led SDF over its southern border on Wednesday, a move widely condemned by the international community for triggering a humanitarian disaster, opening a new front in Syria’s complex war and risking the re-emergence of Isis, which lost control of its final slivers of territory in March.

Operation Peace Spring, as Ankara has designated it, was triggered by Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops partnered with the SDF from the region last week. The US special forces have long acted as a buffer stopping the SDF and Turkey from clashing: Ankara considers the Kurdish YPG, which makes up the majority of the multi-ethnic SDF, as a terrorist group indistinguishable from the outlawed militant group the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). Trump has denied the decision to abandon the SDF to a likely attack from Turkey was a betrayal.

Trump, in a tweet on Sunday, said: “Very smart not to be involved in the intense fighting along the Turkish Border, for a change. Those that mistakenly got us into the Middle East Wars are still pushing to fight. They have no idea what a bad decision they have made. Why are they not asking for a Declaration of War?”

The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s stated goal is to create a “safe zone” 20 miles deep on its border with the SDF, deep enough to keep Turkish border towns out of the range of shelling and rocket fire.

However, Ain Issa and other Kurdish-held roads and towns south of the proposed safe zone have been hit by airstrikes and shelling. On Sunday morning Syrian rebels allied to the Turks were advancing south on the town of Ain Issa, two military sources told the Guardian.

Speaking on Sunday, Erdoğan rejected offers for mediation with the SDF and criticised his western Nato allies for standing by what Turkey considers to be a terrorist organisation.

“What kind of prime minister, what kind of head of state are those who offer to mediate between us and the terror group?” the president asked, without specifying which countries made a mediation offer.

He also dismissed the reports of escaped Isis prisoners as “disinformation” aimed at provoking the US and other western countries.

About 130,000 people have been displaced in Syria in the five-day-old operation so far.

The Kurdish Red Crescent, a local NGO not affiliated with the International Committe of the Red Cross, said 14 civilians have died, with another 46 seriously injured as a result of the offensive to date. Nine people, including a Syrian baby, have been killed in counterattack SDF shelling of Turkish border towns.