Foreign-backed Terrorists in Syria receieve anti-tank, anti-aircraft weapons

A spokesman for the foreign-backed Takfiri militants in Syria says the armed groups have been supplied with heavy weapons including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles by ‘brotherly nations.’

Louay Muqdad, the media coordinator of the terrorist Free Syrian Army (FSA), told CNN that the new weapons “will be a turning point” in the conflict and will “definitely change the rules of the war on the ground.”

Muqdad had earlier confirmed that the militants had obtained new weapons.

“We have received quantities of new types of weapons, including some that we asked for and that we believe will change the course of the battle on the ground,” he said on June 21.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the same day that CIA operatives have been secretly providing the militants with training on the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons for months.

Since the opening of a new US military base southwest of Jordan in November 2012, the CIA operatives and US special operations troops have covertly trained the militants in groups of 20 to 45 at a time in two-week courses, the daily said.

The militants receive training with Russian-designed 14.5-millimeter anti-tank rifles, anti-tank missiles, and 23-millimeter anti-aircraft weapons, according to a militant commander in the Syrian province of Dara’a.

In December 2012, militants fired warning shots at an airliner preparing to take off from Aleppo International Airport, in the first direct attack on a civilian aircraft.

The FSA had warned before the attack that civilian aircraft flying in or out of airports in Damascus or Aleppo risk being shot down.

On Saturday, foreign ministers of the countries that support the militants agreed to provide the terrorists with arms.

The foreign ministers convened for the so-called Friends of Syria meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha, and agreed to “provide urgently all the necessary materiel and equipment to the opposition on the ground, each country in its own way, in order to enable them to… protect the Syrian people.”

The agreement came after US President Barack Obama on June 14 ordered his administration to provide the militants in Syria with weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles. Russia and the UN have criticized the move by Washington.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on June 17 that European countries will “pay the price” if they send weapons to the militants.

Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have died in the foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria since March 2011.