One of the 28 bundles of weapons and medical supplies airdropped by U.S. forces to Kurdish fighters in Syria most likely fell into enemy hands, a Pentagon spokesman said today, but a majority reached their intended recipients.
"We still know that the vast majority of resupply bundles that we dropped went to friendly forces and were received by friendly forces," Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters. "There is always going to be some margin of error in these types of operations. We routinely overload these aircraft because we know that some bundles may go astray."
The pallet was dropped by U.S. forces Oct. 19 to resupply Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in the border town of Kobani.
“One bundle worth of equipment is not enough equipment to give the enemy any type of advantage at all,” Warren told reporters. “It’s a relatively small amount of supplies. This is stuff ISIL already has.”
The weapons, ammunition and medical supplies being dropped to besieged Kurdish forces defending Kobani are being supplied by Kurds in neighboring Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve aimed at eliminating ISIL terrorists who hold significant portions of Northern Iraq and Syria.
A second airdropped bundle with similar contents also went off course, Warren said, but it was destroyed by fighter aircraft soon after it hit the ground. It’s possible that wind could have driven the packages off course, he said.
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