CNN: US Army Airdrops Tons of Ammo to New Militant Group in Northern Syria
“C-17 cargo planes dropped ammunition on 112 pallets to be retrieved by opposition fighters on the ground from a US-vetted group called by Washington the Syrian Arab Coalition,” CNN quoted an unnamed US official as saying on Monday.
The CNN claimed that this was a first step in a US effort to boost support to what the White House refers to “as moderate opposition forces fighting regular Syrian troops loyal to President Bashar Assad”.
The US calls Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, and the Free Syrian Army whose members have almost all joined the ISIL and the Al-Nusra Front as moderate forces.
Reports given out by several western think-tanks said some 34 to 36 militant groups are fighting the government in Syria, all of which are “extremists and the difference is only in the level of extremist ideologies that they pursue”.
The newly-named Syrian anti-government force was first mentioned by policy undersecretary at the US Defense Department Christine Wormuth during Congressional testimony in September.
She said the group was being trained as part of a train-and-equip mission for “anti-Assad opposition factions in Syria”.
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