ALEPPO, Syria, Sept. 20 (UPI) — About 75 heavily armed militants trained by the United States, Turkey and Britain entered Syria via the Turkish border, a human rights monitoring group reported Sunday.
The fighters, riding 12 vehicles mounted with machine guns, crossed by way of the Bab al-Salamah border crossing between Friday and Saturday before taking positions in Aleppo province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The report comes after Gen. Lloyd Austin of U.S. Central Command last week told lawmakers there were only “four or five” U.S.-trained Syrians fighting against jihadists in the country — a number later revised to nine.
U.S. officials have not confirmed Sunday’s report.
SOHR says the 75 fighters are with groups known as Suqur al-Jabal, or “Falcons of the Mountain,” and Division 30 — the main U.S.-backed group. Nearly 60 members of Division 30 came under attack by militants with al-Qaida’s Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, in July, and several of the U.S.-backed rebels fled or were killed or captured, including their leader.
Days later, Pentagon officials said coalition airstrikes were conducted to assist U.S.-backed rebels with the New Syria Force, who, alongside allies with the Free Syrian Army, came under attack by Nusra Front militants.
In May the Pentagon began a program intended to train at least 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels by the end of 2015, but U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter in July said the United States had trained “an awfully small number” of 60 rebels to fight Islamic State militants, partly because of a rigorous vetting process to make sure recruits do not support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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