The revamped Pentagon program to train so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels to combat the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has produced less than 100 fighters since it was launched almost six months ago, according to USA officials.
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The United States says coalition forces are making progress against Islamic State militants and planning assaults on key cities in Iraq and Syria.
Rebel sources said that the desert approaches to the town had been secured and that rebel forces were already within the town’s boundaries.
“Our aim is to cut Syria from Iraq” by capturing Boukamal and surrounding areas, al-Saloum said.
The town is just a few kilometres from the Iraqi frontier in Deir al-Zor province, almost all of which is under Islamic State militants’ control. U.S.-led coalition air strikes had hit militant hideouts in the town, the Observatory said.
The NSA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, both announced on Wednesday morning that the rebels had seized control of Hamdan airport, about 5 kilometres north-west of Al-Bukamal.
Military sources reported that the rebel fighters have entered the administrative borders of al-Bukamal and took over a number of ISIS positions there on Tuesday midnight.
The rebels said the operation was coordinated with Iraqi forces who were advancing on the crossing from the other side of the border.
“The attack on the Lebanese national security and the unfamiliar manner in which it was executed usher in a new kind of phase in the state’s confrontation with the dark forces of terrorism”, a Cabinet statement said.
Amaq news agency, affiliated with IS, earlier said the group had killed 40 rebel fighters and captured 15 more in a counter-attack at the Hamadan air base north-west of the city. Losing it would be a huge symbolic and strategic blow to the cross-border “caliphate” led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces have besieged Manbij, an IS stronghold in northern Syria’s Aleppo province, while Iraqi forces have taken Fallujah in Iraq’s western Anbar province from the Sunni extremist group.
The anti-Islamic State coalition will pass on Saudi Arabia’s offer to send ground troops into the fight, the U.S. representative to the coalition told Congress on Tuesday.
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“Whereas (the Islamic State) once promised lavish pay for recruits, and free services in its ‘caliphate, ‘ it is now slashing pay, can not provide services, and is facing internal resistance”, McGurk said.
