The Pentagon said on Thursday that a group of Syrian fighters in Jordan is now being trained and armed by the U.S. military to confront and combat the Islamic State militants in Syria.

Los Angeles Times reported that after many months of delays, the American Special Operations troops have started to train about 90 Syrian fighters. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that there will be a second group of fighters to be trained in the next few weeks.

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The U.S.-led military training and arming of Syrian fighters, according to Carter, was a challenge because of the strong civil war in the war-torn country. The Defense Secretary also said that the principal mission of the U.S. training is to train and equip the Syrian fighters; however, Carter said that they have not yet determined all the rules about the engagement, adding that the U.S. is inclined to support the Syrians.

The Times reported that about 3,700 Syrians had volunteered for the U.S.-led program, according to Col. Patrick Ryder. The United States Central Command Spokesperson also added that 400 recruits had been screened while 800 were in the process.

The goal of U.S. in this training and arming of Syrian fighters is to train about 5,000 fighters a year, a small number to combat thousands of Islamist fighters in Syria. Carter said that if they were opposed by the regime forces, the U.S. would have some responsibility to help the fighters.

Members of the U.S. Congress and the Syrian fighters are skeptical about the training. Some lawmakers said that the U.S.-led program is small and too slow to train and arm 15,000 opposition forces, which was forecasted by the Pentagon to take about three years, Reuters reported.

TagsDefense, rebellions, us military, us training, syrian training