In the latest air strikes Russia’s Defence Ministry said its planes hit the headquarters of the Liwa al-Haqq militant group in Syria killing 200 insurgents. Assistance to moderate forces fighting the Assad government should be accelerated: The rebels desperately need more US antitank missiles.
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Obama has previously questioned the notion that arming rebels would change the course of Syria’s war. A second class yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from USA lawmakers who condemned the program as a joke and a failure.
A Syrian military official said his troops took over Tak Sukayk, a village in the northern part of the rural province of Hama, bordering the north-western province of Idlib.
“Throughout this period, working with our coalition partners, we have also pursued other efforts to partner with and enable capable ground forces motivated to take back Syrian territory from ISIL”, Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook stated.
The United States also announced Friday it would halt its troubled programme to build up Syrian rebel units to fight IS. “I don’t think the US has a plan in Syria,” he said in a phone interview from Turkey.
Funding for the program was approved last December, with training beginning in May.
Brett McGurk, the president’s special envoy in the fight against the Islamic State, said that this is an evolving strategy because it involves the “most complex” and “most dynamic situation imaginable”.
In Hama, regime forces seized Atshan village from opposition fighters including Islamists and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, state television and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Last month General Lloyd Austin – who heads the U.S. military’s Central Command, which is overseeing efforts against the Islamic State – conceded that only “four or five” Pentagon-trained rebels were engaged in Syria.
Spanish national daily newspaper ABC offered a list of what it believes are Obama’s mistakes in Syria.
The Pentagon says help will now be provided to “a select group of vetted leaders and their units”.
Cook said that the shift does not imply Washington’s unwillingness to support other ground forces that have been fighting ISIS successfully.
“The work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria is an example of an effective approach,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference in London without providing any details of the new program.
The Russian bombing has been accompanied by a major advance led by Syrian government forces, backed by thousands of Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen and hundreds of Iranian troops, shifting the balance of power in the civil war.
These groups, boosted by US-supplied weapons, will supposedly push into IS territory in Syria.
The Pentagon did not name which groups would receive support.
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The response comes on the heels of a series of Russian aircraft incidents that raised concerns about the potential for mishaps, as the U.S.-led coalition continues to launch daily airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria.
