Syrian Arab militias dispute they received U.S. airdrop of ammunition [View all]

[Jesus Malverde]

More than a week after the Pentagon announced that it had dropped 50 tons of ammunition to Syrian Arabs to support a new offensive against Islamic State extremists, it’s uncertain who exactly it reached.

Leaders of two principal Arab militias said they hadn’t received any arms aid and doubted that any Arab forces had.

“We didn’t get anything,” Sheikh Humaydi Daham al Hadi, the head of the Shammar tribe, told McClatchy in an interview at his palatial compound in Syria’s Hasaka province. “Maybe our partners, the Kurds did,” a reference to the People’s Protection Units, the YPG militia, which, with the help of U.S. air power, now dominates much of northeastern Syria.

Humaydi’s son, Bandar al Humaydi, who heads the al Sanadid militia, said that no Arab militia had received aid “so far as we know.”

“We got nothing, and it’s not clear at all (if we will),” Bandar told McClatchy by phone Tuesday evening.

Another Arab militia commander, Abu Issa, the commander of Liwa Thurwar Al-Raqqa, the Raqqa Revolutionaries, told McClatchy his forces in Raqqa province had not received any U.S. support. He, too, said he knew of no other Arab group that had.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article40532349.html