"Seventy-five new fighters trained in a camp near the Turkish capital entered Aleppo province between Friday night and Saturday morning," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He said the group had entered in a convoy of a dozen cars with light weapons and ammunition, under air cover from the US-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.
The fighters then deployed to support two US-backed units, with most assigned to Division 30 -- the main unit for US-trained fighters -- and others to a group called Suqur al-Jabal (Falcons of the Mountain).
Before the new batch of fighters, the US-led train-and-equip programme had only managed to identify and train some 60 rebels to fight IS jihadists on the ground.
The $500 million programme run out of Turkey has been fraught with problems, with more than a dozen of those already deployed with Division 30 either dead or kidnapped.
AFP
ahram.org.eg
20/9/15
--
-
Related:
--
Syria Qaeda captures five more US-trained rebels
US struggles to find ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels to train
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
Syria conflict: New US-backed rebels cross from Turkey...
ReplyDeleteA group of 75 US-backed rebels has crossed into northern Syria from Turkey to fight jihadists, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
The rebels crossed into Syria in 12 vehicles equipped with machine guns over the weekend, it added.
It comes days after a top US general said only a handful of rebels trained by the US were still fighting in Syria................BBC
20/9/15