US airdrops small arms ammunition to Syrian Arab groups

In this Sept. 16, 2015, photo, US Central Command Commander Gen. Lloyd Austin III, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Obama administration is preparing a major overhaul of its failed effort to train thousands of moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group, shifting from preparing rebels for frontline combat to a plan to embed them with established Kurdish and Arab forces in northeastern Syria, US officials said. The discussion of a new approach comes a day after Austin, told Congress that the $500 million effort to train 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels in a year had yielded “four or five” new fighters after another 50 or so were captured, wounded or fled in their first encounter with extremist militants. AP

WASHINGTON — US cargo planes dropped small arms ammunition to Arab groups fighting the Islamic State group in northern Syria, a US military spokesman said Monday.

Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman in Baghdad for the US military command in charge of the anti-IS campaign in Syria and Iraq, said by email that the airdrop was conducted Sunday by Air Force C-17 cargo planes. He did not identify the Arab groups that received the supplies but said their leaders had been vetted and have been fighting to remove IS from northern Syria.

The airdrop is in line with a revamped US approach in Syria. The Obama administration announced last week that instead of trying to build a new Syrian rebel force, it will provide equipment, including ammunition, to existing Syria rebel groups who share the US goal of defeating IS.

Separately, a local Kurdish official in the northern Syrian city of Kobani said the US had provided 120 tons of weapons and ammunition to the main Kurdish militia fighting the Islamic State in that area, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. The official, Mustafa Bali, said he did not know whether the supplies had been provided by air or over land.

The US military headquarters in charge of the coalition campaign against IS said in an email to The Associated Press that it had made no delivery of weapons or ammunition directly to the Syrian Kurds in the last week.

Spokesmen for the YPG did not return calls to the AP.

Bali and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists across Syria, said the YPG and other factions have formed a “Forces of Democratic Syria” coalition whose main aim will be to fight IS.

The coalition includes Arab, Kurdish and Assyrian rebel factions that have been fighting IS over the past year. The Observatory and Bali said the aim of the coalition in the future will be to march toward the northern city of Raqqa which is the Islamic State’s declared capital.

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