Syria air strikes hit Nusra after attack on Western-backed rebels – monitor

The leader of a U.S.-backed rebel group and several of his men have been abducted in northern Syria by the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, the rebel group and opposition activists said Thursday.

The Assad government, which uses aircraft to attack opposition forces located relatively nearby, was warned by the administration – through a previously used conduit at the Syrian United Nations mission in New York – to stay away from where the trained fighters were inserted, another U.S. official said.

The train and equip program aims to bolster Syrian insurgents deemed politically moderate enough by the United States to fight Islamic State, which has seized wide areas of Syria. He said the “Division 30” group had received training in Turkey, but did not know whether it was by the Americans.

The fighting, which the Observatory said had killed at least 13 people on both sides, points to one of the major complications facing U.S. and Turkish plans to jointly sweep Islamic State militants from northern Syria.

“Al-Nusra attacked at dawn the headquarters of Division 30, near the town of Azaz in the northern province of Aleppo”, the Britain-based Observatory said.

A statement issued in the name of “Division 30” accused the Nusra Front of being behind the abduction.

The C.I.A. program suffered its own setback late last year, when the Nusra Front defeated the groups trained by the C.I.A., the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and Harakat Hazm.

Fifty-four Syrian opposition fighters went into the country earlier this month after they completed training at the beginning of July.

The Nusra Front, which Washington has designated a terrorist organisation, has a track record of crushing U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said it has fallen far behind plans.

The kidnapping, which occurred Wednesday night, came a few days after the U.S. and Turkey announced the outlines of a deal to help rebels push IS back from a strip of territory it controls along the Syrian-Turkish border, replacing it with more moderate rebels backed by Washington and Ankara.

The $500-million programme run out of Turkey is intended to build a force that will fight the Islamic State group on the ground.

Pentagon officials say 1,500 volunteers are waiting for the completion of a vetting process to join train-and-equip.