THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

We just had to train up and send another group of fighters into Syria. And to show what a wonderful job we are doing, it has been announced in the press.

A group of 75 fighters, recently trained by U.S. and coalition forces in Turkey, have entered northern Syria to join the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a monitoring group reported on Sunday.

The fighters entered Syria in a convoy of a dozen cars with light weapons and ammunition, under air cover from the coalition that has been carrying out strikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British human rights group, said on Sunday.

"Seventy-five new fighters trained in a camp near the Turkish capital entered Aleppo province between Friday night and Saturday morning," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told Al Jazeera.

U.S. officials on Sunday did not issue an immediate response to the report. On Wednesday, Gen. Austin Lloyd, who oversees the U.S. campaign against ISIL, told Congress that four or five U.S.-trained rebels were fighting in Syria. On Friday his spokesman, Col. Patrick Ryder, told reporters that four more had re-entered Syria since Austin spoke.

Abdel Rahman said the new group of U.S.-trained fighters crossed through the Bab al-Salama border point, the main gateway for fighters and supplies heading into Aleppo province.

That supply route has been increasingly targeted by ISIL fighters seeking to cut off support to rival rebel groups who are also fighting against the Syrian regime.

Abdel Rahman said the group was deployed to support two other U.S.-backed units, with most assigned to Division 30, the main unit for US-trained fighters, and others to a group called Suqur al-Jabal (Falcons of the Mountain).

Before this new batch of fighters, the U.S.-led “train-and-equip” program had only managed to vet and train about 60 rebels to fight ISIL.

The $500 million program, based in Turkey, has been fraught with problems. More than a dozen of those already deployed with Division 30 have been killed or detained by the Nusra Front, an armed group affiliate with Al-Qaeda.

So that makes 135 fighters left. Just about enough to be a pain in the ass for someone.