US-trained rebels enter Syria

Seventy-five Syrian rebels trained to fight jihadists under a beleaguered US programme have crossed from Turkey into northern Syria, a US-backed rebel faction and a monitoring group said yesterday.

"Seventy-five new fighters trained in a camp near the Turkish capital entered Aleppo province between Friday night and Saturday morning," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

Hassan Mustafa, spokesman for the US-backed Division 30 unit to which some of the rebels were deployed, confirmed to AFP that the group had entered Syria.

"Their training in Turkey lasted two months and they went directly to the front lines with Daesh," Mustafa said via the Internet, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Before the fresh batch of fighters, the US-led train-and-equip programme had only managed to vet and train some 60 rebels to fight ISIS jihadists on the ground.

The $500 million programme run out of Turkey has been fraught with problems.

Shortly after the 54 fighters embedded with Division 30 in July, more than a dozen of them were either killed or kidnapped by Al-Nusra. Report says there are only five or six US-trained fighters on the ground to fight ISIS now.

Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem yesterday predicted that Russia's increased involvement in his country would prove a game changer in the international campaign against ISIS.

Muallem, quoted by Syrian media, said Russia's more prominent role would "wreck the plans of all those who have been plotting against Syria and also show up America's lack of a clear strategy" against the jihadists.

On the ground, a ceasefire went into effect yesterday between Syrian pro-government forces and Islamist rebels in three battleground districts, a local official and a monitoring group said.