BEIRUT // Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front has kidnapped eight rebels who participated in a US training programme to fight ISIL, a monitor said on Thursday.
“Yesterday evening, forces from Al Nusra Front kidnapped the commander of Division 30, Colonel Nadim Hassan, along with seven members of the Division, including commander Farhan Al Jassem,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based monitor said the group “was returning from a meeting in the city of Azaz in northern Aleppo province to their headquarters in the nearby village of Malikiyeh.”
The Azaz meeting “was specifically to coordinate with other rebel groups on the ground to begin a military operation against the Islamic State group in northeastern Aleppo province,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
He also confirmed that the eight fighters were part of a group of 54 rebels that entered Syria from Turkey around two weeks ago after receiving training there.
The kidnap was also reported in a statement purportedly issued by Division 30 and circulated on social media.
“The leadership of Division 30 condemns the kidnap of Colonel Nadim Hassan, commander of Division 30, and his comrades, by members of Al Nusra Front in northern Aleppo province,” the statement said.
It called on “the brothers of Al Nusra Front to free (the kidnapped) as quickly as possible to preserve Muslim blood and avoid weakening the fronts with side disputes between brothers.”
The kidnap is a potential blow for the US-led train-and-equip programme, which the Pentagon acknowledged early this month had only managed to identify and train some 60 fighters.
The $500-million programme run out of Turkey is intended to build a force that will fight ISIL on the ground.
But it has been fraught with problems, with few candidates approved for participation and, reportedly, a high attrition rate.
In January, the Pentagon said about 5,400 Syrian rebels would be trained and armed in the first year of the programme.
But on July 8, defence secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged it had fallen far short.
“This number is much smaller than we had hoped for at this point,” he said.
* Agence France-Presse
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This month, Dubai Medical College launched the Middle East’s first master's programme in addiction science.
Together with the Erada Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation, the college offers a two-year master’s course as well as a one-year diploma in the same subject.
The move was announced earlier this year and is part of a new drive to combat drug abuse and increase the region’s capacity for treating drug addiction.
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.
She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.
The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.
She was held in her native country a year later.
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British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
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