US probes 'Islamic State' airdrop video

The US military on Tuesday said the vast majority of supplies had reached the Kurdish units they were intended to help.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said experts were analyzing a video posted by the "Islamic State" (IS) boasting that it had captured the weapons. Kirby said at least one bundle of weapons had not reached its intended target. This was thought to have been destroyed in a US airstrike, although the video might suggest it was not the case.

Kirby said intelligence experts were trying to determine whether the ordnance had indeed gone astray.

"We're taking a look at this," Kirby said of the video, accepting it was possible that some supplies had fallen into the wrong hands. He said the small arms ammunition and weaponry depicted in the video were the kinds of supplies that were dropped. "It's not out of the realm of possibility."

"We're still taking a look at it and assessing the validity of it," he said.

The video shows a large consignment of packages wrapped in clear plastic attached to parachute cords. Later, boxes are shown in a line along a fence with a jihadist fighter claiming that the "spoils" included rocket propelled grenade launchers and grenades.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which uses a network of analysts on the ground as its sources, said the militants had seized at least one cache.

The drops were made to Kurds on Monday, with Washington claiming that the Kurdish fighters were beginning to make headway against IS.

IS has been trying to take the town of Kobani for more than a month, with some 200,000 people fleeing from the town and surrounding area into Turkey.

rc/lw (AFP, dpa, Reuters)