US to provide additional $45 million to Syrian insurgents, Clinton announces

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement at a meeting of foreign ministers of the so-called Friends of Syria group in New York on Friday.

Clinton said $30 million would be allocated for humanitarian relief and another $15 million would be used to support what she referred to as civilian opposition groups.

The US has already provided some $25 million to the armed groups, calling it non-lethal assistance to help them purchase communications devices.

Some European and Arab countries have also provided weapons to the insurgents fighting against the Syrian government.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals, mostly from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.