The rebels came from different parts of Syria.
Many people in CAR believe most of the rebels came from Chad and South Sudan.
They know the rebels came from Benghazi to Ajdabiya and that we are withdrawing.
"The rebels came from all over the western mountains, and they just took what they wanted," said Riyad, a supervisor of the ruined arsenal's small contingent of rebel guards.
Mr. Gbagbo has said he will not hand over his powers to the new prime minister, who, like most of the rebels, comes from the mainly Muslim northern part of the country.
In 2014, Bellingcat reported that a BUK mobile launcher, spotted on July 17 in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels, came from a military convoy from Russia's 53rd anti-aircraft brigade – a unit based in Kursk but sent on manoeuvres near the Ukrainian border.
"We saw the rebels coming from the mountain," she remembers.
Although officially neutral during the Spanish civil wars, the United States allowed rebels to trade at American ports and much of the weaponry and ammunition used by the rebels came from the United States.
The rural rebels came from a wide range of backgrounds, but typically they were, as the historian Christopher Dyer describes, "people well below the ranks of the gentry, but who mainly held some land and goods", and not the very poorest in society, who formed a minority of the rebel movement.
In response, Turkish warplanes pounded the border region, which in summer is often populated by the Kurdistan Workers Partyy, whose rebels come down from their bases around the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq to carry out attacks inside Turkey.
