WASHINGTON

Roughly 70 U.S.-trained and equipped rebels have returned to Syria to take up the fight against Daesh, Central Command said Monday.

The New Syrian Forces “will fight alongside vetted opposition forces and employ their training and equipment acquired through the T&E program to enhance the efforts of these larger units already in the fight against ISIL,” the U.S.'s Middle East command said in a statement, referring to the train and equip program.

While the rebels do not operate under the U.S.-led coalition’s command and control structure, the coalition “will continue to support and enable them as part of the ongoing campaign to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL”.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Sunday that 75 fighters re-entered Syria through the Bab al-Salamah border crossing using 12 all-terrain vehicles with mounted machine guns.

A previous deployment of 54 U.S.-trained rebels met significant battlefield setbacks, and a leading U.S. general recently acknowledged that only “4 or 5” remained in the fight.

Central Command said the contributions of the newly-minted fighters “will be additive to those already being made in Syria by tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and other anti-ISIL forces, who have re-secured more than 17,000 sq. km. of territory previously held by ISIL.”

The U.S. initially hoped to deploy 5,400 fighters to Syria this year, but with less than 200 successfully trained and deployed it appears the U.S.-led coalition will fall well short of that goal.