US rebel training in Syria scrapped

The US is abandoning its goal of training a new force of moderate Syrian rebels and will focus on equipping, arming and supporting established groups already fighting Islamic State (IS) inside Syria, officials said.

The change reflects the failure of the current approach, which has produced only a handful of combat-ready moderates and drawn deep criticism in Congress.

Officials said the new approach would focus heavily on equipping and enabling established Kurdish and Arab rebel groups rather than recruiting and vetting a new cadre of moderate rebels, training them at camps in Turkey and Jordan and reinserting them as an infantry force into Syria.