The U.S. on Sunday said
it had dropped weapons, ammunition and medical supplies for the first
time to Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian town of Kobani from ISIS. A
day later, U.S. officials said one of the six airstrikes it carried out
near Kobani intentionally struck a bundle of supplies to keep it from
falling into the wrong hands.
ISIS propaganda material
in the past has shown fighters flaunting what appear to be U.S.-made
weapons, tanks and Humvees seized from retreating Iraqi forces.
Still, the seizure of
emergency arms dropped by the U.S. for Kurdish forces would be a
troubling development mixed with a dose of embarrassment for the
American-led anti-ISIS coalition. One of the main sticking points
against arming moderate rebels battling to unseat Syria’s President
Bashar al-Assad was the idea weapons could fall into the wrong hands.
A new video released
Tuesday by Aamaq News — an ISIS affiliated media unit — shows hand
grenades and RPGs which a fighter in the video says were dropped from
U.S. aircraft.
Rifling through a crate,
a fighter fiddles with rusty-looking munitions and explains “this is
some of the military equipment that was dropped by American forces.” A
box with metal cannisters is opened and the man cracks open the case:
“These are the bombs that the American forces dropped for the Kurdish
parties,” he says. “They are spoils of war for the Mujahideen.”
While the video could
not be independently verified by NBC News, analysts and experts said it
appeared likely the arms on display came from the U.S. airdrop. Pentagon
spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told reporters Tuesday analysts were
still analyzing the video, but the arms shown are the kind being dropped
to Kurdish forces.
"So it's not out of the
realm of the possible in that regard. But, again, we're taking a look at
this, and we just don't know," Kirby said. "We are very confident that
the vast majority of the bundles did end up in the right hands."
Reed Foster, head of the
military capabilities desk at IHS Jane's, told NBC News that the video
featured what appeared to be disassembled munitions from RPG-7 —
probably sourced from an eastern European country — and an older type of
DM41 fragmentary grenades of German origin.
“Unsurprisingly perhaps,
many of these munitions are likely European in origin,” he explained.
“Probably surplus stocks from NATO countries, which would potentially be
much easier to procure … and fly them into theater than sourcing all
the way from the U.S.”
A senior administration
official told reporters earlier this week that the weapons dropped by
the U.S. had been provided by Kurdish authorities, which would help
explain the origins and why some of the weapons in appearing in the
video appear aged and/or Soviet.
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