Syrian rebel group leaves their HQ after clash with al-Qaida

BEIRUT (AP) — Activists say clashes between members of al-Qaida’s branch in Syria and a rebel faction in the country’s north believed to have been trained by the U.S. government have stopped after the rebels left the area.

Syrian rebels of Division 30 received military training under a US-led programme aimed at building a moderate force to fight the Islamic State group (IS).

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitor with a network of activists on the ground in Syria, confirmed the attack, adding that coalition airplanes bombed the Nusra Front’s headquarters in retaliation for Nusra’s offensive against Division 30.

The military is battling insurgents including al Qaeda’s Syria wing Nusra Front and the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham for control of Sahl al-Ghab, a plain that runs alongside the western coastal mountains as well as lying close to Hama city.

Only two days after the group’s capture, a militia conducted a major attack on Division 30’s headquarters, killing five other graduates of the programme. According to the Observatory, at least 18 Al-Nusra fighters were killed in the ensuing clashes and raids by the US-led coalition.

But such a resolution is unlikely to materialise, with Nusra escalating its targeting of US-trained rebels and the American-led coalition against Isis continuing to target Nusra.

On Thursday, a US defence department spokeswoman denied the report.

It did not specify how many rebels had been captured, or where or when the incident took place.

Division 30’s leaders expected to play a role in an ambitious new joint push by the United States and Turkey to help less radical Syrian insurgent groups seize territory from the fundamentalist militant fighters of the Islamic State.

“They then send them back to Syria to fight the Nusra Front“, the man, with a light beard said while standing in front of what appeared to be sand bags in a field.

Syria’s official SANA news agency said “dozens of terrorists” had been killed and that troops had captured several villages after “intensifying operations in the area”. The strikes were the first known use of coalition air power in direct battlefield support of fighters in Syria who were trained by the Pentagon. Instead, they launched an attack on the Division 30 command near Azaz, they said.

“We warn soldiers of [Division 30] against proceeding in the American project”, Jabhat al-Nusra said in a statement released on Friday. The Observatory said 27 insurgents have been killed since Friday.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted last month that only 60 rebels have completed the program – though the Pentagon has used up half Train and Equip’s budget. By staying out of the fight, they may have signaled that they have not accepted a central feature of the Pentagon’s program: that it be directed only at the Islamic State and not at the Syrian government forces of President Bashar Assad, against whom the rebels originally took up arms.

Several insurgent leaders said the Pentagon should market its program as “protecting civilians”, from both the Islamic State group and government forces. And it makes a mockery of recent administration claims that the U.S. and Turkey have agreed to set up an ISIS-free zone in northern Syria.

More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests that descended into a civil war after a regime crackdown.