US senators in Saudi Arabia, Qatar for talks on Syrian rebels

RIYADH — A delegation of US senators led by John McCain have met separately with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman and Qatar's emir, part of a regional tour focused on training Syrian rebels. As they met, hundreds of civilians fled rebel-held areas near Damascus that had been blockaded for over a year.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are staunch supporters of Syria's opposition, which is mired in a nearly four-year war to oust President Bashar Assad. The meetings took place Saturday, a day after the Pentagon said that as many as 1,000 US troops and support personnel would be sent to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to help train vetted Syrian rebels.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the training by a mix of US special and conventional forces could begin as early as this spring.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who accompanied McCain, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that the rebels would be unable to defeat the Islamic State group without a no-fly zone to protect them from government aircraft.

"The current strategy is failing. Everybody has told us on this trip that if you don't have a no-fly zone, the people we're trying, the Free Syrian Army that we're training, is going to go back into Syria and get slaughtered by Assad."

A message on the official Twitter feed for McCain, R-Arizona, said the US delegation met with the commander of Saudi Arabia's training and equipment programme and with Ahmed Al Jarba, whom it identified as the president of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition. Jarba stepped down as SNC president in July 2014. The current SNC president is Khaled Khoja. The reason for the discrepancy in McCain's tweet was not immediately clear.

The US senators also met in neighbouring Qatar with Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, the country's emir. The delegation included Graham, R-South Carolina, Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, Angus King, I-Maine, and Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, the state news agency reported. All sit on the Senate's Armed Services Committee, which McCain chairs.

In Syria, meanwhile, hundreds of civilians fled from rebel-held towns east of Damascus that had been blockaded for at least 18 months.

Hundreds of women and children could be seen in footage aired by the Lebanese channel Al Mayadeen sitting in what appeared to be a large courtyard.

One of the women said rebel fighters seized men fleeing with them. "As soon as you leave, they'll start hitting us," she said they told the group, referring to government forces.

The woman, who did not give her name, said they had been eating stale cracked wheat and barley to survive.

Activists in those areas had said that they were mostly living without power for months, including during a snowy winter, and had only sparse food supplies.

Both government forces and rebels use blockades to pressure their foes to surrender, often causing widespread suffering for civilians.

State-run media said some 2,000 civilians fled, including over 1,000 children and 350 gunmen who surrendered. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, estimated the number at 1,200 people.

It was not immediately clear why Syrian authorities allowed the people to flee. The area has long been held by armed groups fighting Assad's rule.

In recent months, more moderate rebel groups have increasingly clashed with jihadi organisations, including the Islamic State group and Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Al Nusra Front.

A military cargo aircraft laden with ammunition and food crashed late Saturday in the country's north, killing at least 35 pro-government forces.

Al Nusra Front said on its Twitter feed Sunday that its fighters shot down the aircraft overnight near the Duhour Air Base and killed 37 men — Syrian soldiers and Shiite fighters of the Lebanese group Hizbollah.

The observatory said the plane crashed after it became entangled in electrical cables, killing 35 men. The observatory obtains its information from a network of activists on the ground.

Syria's state-run media said the plane crashed while trying to land in poor weather on Friday evening, killing the entire crew.

Syrian rebels have shot down government aircraft in the past.

Western nations have been reluctant to provide anti-aircraft weapons to rebels, fearing that they could fall into the hands of extremists.

But more moderate groups have said they need the weapons to counter government air strikes, which have killed thousands of people and forced tens of thousands to flee opposition-held areas.