Syrian dealt U.S. gear to al-Qaida arm

BEIRUT — A Syrian rebel commander who recently completed a U.S. training program has told the U.S. military that he surrendered six coalition-provided trucks and ammunition to an intermediary linked to the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front.

U.S. Central Command said late Friday that roughly 25 percent of the equipment assigned to that unit was apparently turned over earlier this week in exchange for safe passage within the region. U.S. officials said the Syrians continue to insist that they have not relinquished any actual weapons to the Nusra Front and that all of their personnel are still accounted for.

Air Force Col. Pat Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said the command is looking into the incident. But the report contradicts information the Defense Department provided earlier in the day, which said reports of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels defecting and missing equipment going to the Nusra Front were incorrect.

Ryder said the Syrians had told the U.S. earlier Friday that no equipment or people were missing, but the U.S. found out later on that some of those assertions were wrong. He said providing equipment to the Nusra Front is a violation of the training and equipping program.

“In light of this new information, we wanted to ensure the public was informed as quickly as possible about the facts as we know them at this time,” Ryder said. “We are using all means at our disposal to look into what exactly happened and determine the appropriate response.”

The commander who turned the equipment over to the Nusra Front was one of about 70 rebel fighters who were in the second U.S. training course. He had only recently returned to Syria to fight the Islamic State militants.

Meanwhile, a U.N.-backed truce deal has been reached for two key Syrian battleground areas that will see the transfer of thousands of Shiite and Sunni civilians and fighters from one area to another, activists and a militant cleric said Friday.

The deal will end months of fighting between Sunni insurgents and pro-government forces, including fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite militia group Hezbollah, and the besieging of civilians.

The transfer will allow a group of Sunni insurgents operating under a coalition called Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, and their families safe passage out of the Zabadani area along the Lebanese border.

In exchange, 10,000 Shiites, civilians and wounded pro-government fighters from two villages in rebel-controlled northern Idlib province will be allowed to leave, said Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi militant cleric living in Syria.

The Sunni insurgents will head from Zabadani to the rebel-controlled Idlib province, while the Shiites will settle in a government-controlled suburb of Damascus, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

If implemented, the agreement would be another rare example of international diplomacy successfully brokering an end to fighting in specific areas in Syria. The U.N. previously brokered a cease-fire in 2014 to end over two years of siege on the central city of Homs.

But the deal would also underline concerns about forced demographic changes in the Syrian civil war, now in its fifth year, which has already displaced nearly half of Syria’s pre-war population.

The opposition has accused Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government of working with its allies, including Iran, on moving populations around to empty government-held areas of Sunnis. The insurgents against Assad are largely Sunnis, including foreign fighters from around the region and elsewhere who joined the war.

U.N. spokesman Jessy Chahine said on Friday that the U.N. facilitated contacts between the different parties but would not elaborate on details of the deal.

The Observatory said the six-month truce deal would also include the release of rebel detainees. Turkey and Iran also sponsored the deal, it added.