AT 'NATURE'S MERCY':Raging Wildfire Forces Evacuation of Calif. Homes

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LOS ANGELES –  A wildfire fanned by gusty Santa Ana winds raged along the fringes of Southern California communities on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of homes and a university while setting recreational vehicles ablaze.

The blaze erupted during morning rush hour along U.S. 101 in the Camarillo area about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles. It was quickly spread by the winds, which also pushed other damaging blazes across the region.

Flames quickly moved down slopes toward subdivisions, according to the Ventura County Fire Department. More than 12 1/2 square miles were charred, and the fire was about 10 percent contained.

"We know the fire is bigger than that, but it's in some difficult terrain so it's hard to know," said fire spokesman Bill Nash.

A cluster of RVs in a parking lot was destroyed as flames moved close to a mobile home park.

About 2,000 homes were threatened by flames and 15 sustained damage, but none was destroyed, officials said.

No firefighter injuries were reported.

Fire officials said Thursday afternoon that a hazardous materials team will deal with a store of highly toxic pesticides that caught fire at a Laguna Farms property, according the Ventura County Star. Area residents were warned to stay out of the smoke as much as possible.

Evacuations orders were lifted in some neighborhoods Thursday evening, including the smoke-choked campus of California State University, Channel Islands, which has about 5,000 students. But the danger was far from over.

"The weather is mitigating a little bit, so we're taking every opportunity to improve our lines, but we're not off the hook," Nash said. "Tomorrow we expect the Santa Ana winds to quiet down, but it's still expected to be quite warm."

A more complete damage assessment will be done Friday, Nash said.

More than 925 firefighters and law enforcement officials from multiple agencies worked to protect homes around Camarillo Springs Golf Course and in a section of adjacent Thousand Oaks.

Air tankers were grounded for a time in the afternoon because of the winds, which gusted to 50 mph. Planes and helicopters dropped water and retardant until sunset.

The Santa Ana winds sent plumes of smoke and embers over the homes and strawberry fields to the south. At midday, farm sheds burst into flames in a clearing amid rows of crops.

The vegetation-withering dry winds out of the northeast caused humidity levels to plunge from 80 percent to single digits in less than an hour. Temperatures soared into the 90s in Camarillo.

The area is at the western edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, which abruptly descend to a coastal agricultural plain. It was possible the flames could burn all the way to the Pacific Ocean, about 10 miles from the start point.

For a while, the California Highway Patrol closed a 10-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway at Point Mugu. It was reopened at midafternoon around the time coastal weather stations recorded a localized return of moisture-bearing winds off the ocean, although hot Santa Anas kept blowing a few miles inland.

Mark Brewer, 52, was resting at an evacuation center Thursday afternoon after he and about 25 adults and children were evacuated from a county-run homeless shelter. Brewer could see flames coming down a hillside toward the building before he left.

"This is a part of being in Southern California, just like earthquakes," Brewer said.

Brewer, who lost his job in the mortgage industry a year and a half ago, managed to grab his laptop, some clothes and papers from the room he lives in before traveling to a Camarillo church, where evacuees were glued to televisions watching fire coverage.

About 100 miles to the east, two homes, a number of outbuildings and several vehicles were destroyed, and two other homes were damaged in a 5-acre grass fire that prompted the evacuation of an elementary school in Jurupa Valley, said Theresa Williams, a spokeswoman for CalFire.

The blazes could signal a difficult fire season ahead.

Officials with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise said Wednesday in their first 2013 summer outlook that a dry winter and expected warming trend mean the potential for significant fire activity will be above normal on the West Coast, in the Southwest and portions of Idaho and Montana.

Meanwhile, the California Department of Water Resources found the water content in the snowpack was just 17 percent of normal. The snowmelt is a vital water source for the state.

Elsewhere in California, crews made progress on a 4 1/2-square-mile fire burning in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains north of Banning, Riverside County fire spokeswoman Jody Hagemann said.

The fire, which burned a home Wednesday, was 40 percent contained with only sporadic flames showing.

In Northern California, a fire in a remote area of brush and timber north of the town of Butte Meadows grew to more than 3 square miles, with 10 percent containment, state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. Several fires smaller than 200 acres burned in Sonoma, Glenn and Butte counties.

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BATTLE FOR SYRIA:US Training Rebel Forces In Jordan, Sources Say

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    Are events coming to a head in Syria?

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    America's Mideast ally being dragged into war?

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    Was the 'red line' crossed in Syria?

American Special Operations forces and Special Force troops tasked to work with U.S. intelligence agents are training small groups of Syrian opposition forces in Jordan, U.S. military sources told Fox News.

The U.S. trainers are working alongside their Jordanian counterparts to facilitate the training, which has been going on for the past eight to 12 months, the sources say. 

The training program, first reported by the Associated Press, involves classes of about 50 to 60 secular Syrian fighters led by about 100 American trainers, a number that was capped by the Jordanian government. The program is part of a bid to bolster forces battling President Bashar Assad's regime and stem the influence of Islamist radicals among the country's persistently splintered opposition.

But there remain concerns that Al Qaeda figures have infiltrated the Free Syrian Army, making any official support and training to the opposition all the more difficult. At the same time, a senior defense official downplayed the reports, saying the U.S. military is helping to train only Jordanians, not the Syrian opposition.

The Associated Press added that the forces being trained aren't members of the Free Syrian Army. Those in Washington also stressed that the U.S. is providing only nonlethal aid at this point. Others such as Britain and France are involved, the AP's sources said, though it's unclear whether any Western governments are providing materiel or other direct military support after two years of civil war that according to the United Nations already has killed more than 70,000 people.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the program.

Officially, the Obama administration has been vague on the subject of what type of military training it may be providing, while insisting that it is doing all it can -- short of providing weapons to the rebels or engaging in its own military intervention -- to hasten the demise of the Assad family's four-decade dictatorship.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday the U.S. has "provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in handy for the Syrian rebels who are, again, fighting a regime that is not hesitating to use the military might of that regime against its own people.

"That is something we're going to continue to work to bring to an end," he told reporters.

It's unclear what effect the training has had in the conflict, which has become a quagmire with Assad's regime unable to snuff out the rebellion and Syria's opposition incapable thus far of delivering any serious blow to the ruling government's grip on Damascus and control over much of the country.

Some of the Syrians the U.S. is involved with are in turn training other Syrians inside the border, officials said.

They declined to provide more information because they said that would go too deep into intelligence matters. Defense Department officials insisted the Pentagon isn't involved with any military training or arms provisions to the Syrian rebels, either directly or indirectly. The CIA declined to comment.

The New York Times reported Monday that the CIA helped Arab governments and Turkey sharply increase their military aid to Syria's opposition in recent months, with secret airlifts or arms and equipment. It cited traffic data, officials in several countries and rebel commanders, and said the airlift began on a small scale a year ago but has expanded steadily to more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari planes landing in Turkish and Jordanian airports.

The training in Jordan, however, suggests the U.S. help is aimed somewhat at enhancing the rebels' capacity in southern Syria, the birthplace of the revolution two years ago when teenagers in the sleepy agricultural outpost of Dara'a scribbled graffiti on a wall and were tossed into jail, spurring Syria's own version of an Arab Spring uprising. Much of the violence since, however, has been in the northern of the country where rebels have scored several military successes after the Assad regime cracked down brutally on peaceful protesters.

Despite months of U.S. and international support to build a cohesive political movement, however, Syria's fractured opposition is still struggling to rally Syrians behind a common post-Assad vision. And the opposition coalition appears as much hampered by its political infighting as its military deficiencies against an Assad regime arsenal of tanks, fighter jets and scud missiles.

The coalition's president, Mouaz al-Khatib, resigned his position on Sunday because of what he described as restrictions on his work and frustration with the level of international aid. He said Monday he would still represent the opposition this week in Doha, where the Gulf state of Qatar will host a two-day Arab League summit starting Tuesday.

Al-Khatib's resignation comes only days after the opposition chose Ghassan Hitto, a long-time Texas resident, to head its interim government after intense wrangling over posts and influence that U.S. officials say has strained the opposition's unity and caused friction among its primary benefactors Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

It's also unclear how al-Khatib's departure will affect the U.S. goal of political negotiations with amenable members of the Assad regime to end the civil war, given the moderate preacher's support for talks. Much of the Syrian opposition rejects such talks.

"He's been a courageous leader," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said of al-Khatib.

"But the bottom line is what we're looking for is unity," Ventrell said. "We continue to support the coalition's vision for a tolerant, inclusive Syria. We want them to continue to work together to implement that vision."

Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Paris on Wednesday to meet French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius for talks expected to focus on arming Syrian rebels. The discussions also are expected to touch on the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria, according to French officials.

U.S. officials say there are strong indications that chemical weapons weren't used in an attack last week in northern Aleppo, over which the regime and the rebels have issued counterclaims.

Washington has said it will support a U.N. investigation.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Has Army vet aiding Syrian rebels become a jihadist?- Assad's forces hammer Homs neighborhood in Syria

He's a U.S.-trained soldier turned Muslim warrior who moves between America and countries where the winds of the Arab spring blow, fighting alongside jihadists and America-hating terrorists while celebrating his bloody exploits on YouTube videos.

Eric Harroun, 30, grew up in Phoenix before joining the U.S. Army in 2000. Although Harroun was never deployed during his three-year hitch, he has seen plenty of combat fighting with Syrian rebels and, more recently, Jabhat al-Nusra, a group the U.S. State Department classifies as an alias for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

“I was separated in a battle and most of my group was K.I.A. and Al-Nusra picked me up,” Harroun told FoxNews.com during one of several brief interviews conducted via Skype.

“I hate bad guys like Bashar [Assad]. "I hate Iran, too. I am a freedom fighter."

- Eric Harroun, U.S.-born jihadist known as "The American"

Harroun, who said he is now in Turkey, shrugged off a question about fighting alongside Al Qaeda terrorists who have joined the Syrian rebellion, saying, "the U.S. plays both sides, too." He said the offshoot of the terror group behind the 9/11 attacks welcomed him.

“Getting into Al-Nusra is not rocket science," he said. "It just takes balls and brains.”

Harroun, known among Syrian rebels and loyalists alike as “The American,” has moved from one country to another, joining protesters in the takedown of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak before fighting alongside rebels attempting to depose Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. A prolific poster of online diatribes against the infidel, he's joined the threads of those calling for the deaths of Zionists.

His father, Darryl Harroun, told FoxNews.com that his son was discharged from the Army after he was seriously injured while riding in a pickup truck that hit a tree. He was left with full disability pay and a steel plate in his head, according to his father. 

"Now he has mood swings and what-not," said Darryl Harroun, who lives in Arizona and talks to his son by phone frequently. "He was already suffering from depression before that, and the accident just kind of multiplied it."

Darryl Harroun said his son is seen as an adventurer by friends and relatives, who call him "Arizona Jones." 

"He just loves that part of the world," said Darryl Harroun, who said his family has been in the U.S. for several generations and is not Muslim. "We scratch our heads and wonder what the hell he's doing. I told him, 'You're never going to change those people's minds over there.' But he says they treat him like a hero.

"I know one day I'm going to get a message from over there, telling me my son is dead," he said.

Darryl Harroun said he doesn't believe the U.S. -- much less his own son -- has any business in Middle Eastern affairs. But at least one family member seems to believe Harroun is fighting a noble battle.

"Keep fighting Eric!" Harroun's sister, Sarah Harroun, posted on Facebook this week. "The people of Syria and you are in my prayers."

Harroun's descent into Islamic fanaticism seems to have begun sometime after his discharge from the military. With seemingly no way to pursue his lifelong dream of being a soldier, he fell in with two Iraqi brothers, Maadh and Hayder Ibrahim, who he met while attending Pima Community College in Tucson, and began to identify himself as a Muslim, according to people who know him.

He became active on anti-Israeli message boards, posting virulent rants against Zionism as well as his own uploaded images and videos.

A spokesman with the Syrian rebel group known as the Amr ibn al-’Aas Brigade told FoxNews.com “The American” operated with the organization until a month ago. Harroun confirmed reports from the Amr ibn al-'As brigade that he had left Syria, and said he is currently in Istanbul.

Harroun is believed to have worked for a Phoenix-based mortgage company after leaving the military. Officials and co-workers there declined to discuss Harroun, whose online posts indicate he has traveled to and from the Middle East at least a half-dozen times over the last decade.

Army spokesman Ray Gall confirmed that Harroun served in the Army's 568th Engineer Company and was based at Fort Riley, Kansas, from October 2000 to May 2003, attaining the rank of Private First Class before his discharge. Gall declined to provide any details regarding Harroun's discharge.

In Syria, Harroun has become so well known that a pro-regime video was created claiming that “The American” is a “criminal from Miami.” A mugshot and rap sheet are provided as proof of Harroun’s criminal past, but the picture in the video does not resemble Harroun.

In recent months, Harroun has appeared in several online videos alongside Syrian rebels fighting in Damascus. Described in his Facebook profile as a Sunni Muslim, Harroun has posted in several threads claiming to have personally killed several Shabiha (supporters of the Assad regime), Syrian soldiers and an Iranian.

“I hate bad guys like Bashar [Assad]," Harroun told FoxNews.com. "I hate Iran, too. I am a freedom fighter."

In one video posted online, Harroun is seen on the Syrian battlefield, speeding toward a downed helicopter in a Jeep detailed with a Free Syrian Army emblem on its windshield. Harroun told FoxNews.com the video was shot at a place called Mansura in eastern Syria.

In the video, Harroun and a driver he addresses in Arabic as “The Chechen” ride toward the downed Syrian helicopter. 

“We smoked the mother f*****s, didn’t we?” Harroun tells the driver.

"Allah Akbar!” he exclaims.

The FSA is a conglomerate of militia-style groups and former Syrian military personnel, according to Rafael Green, a research fellow at the Middle East Media Research Institute. Green said the FSA cooperates with groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, and is not particular about who takes up its cause

For Harroun, who claims to have been arrested twice by Egyptian security forces in 2011 and traveled extensively in Lebanon and Turkey, the war in Syria seems to be an opportunity to kill in the name of a cause. He said Israel may be next on his agenda -- specifically the Palestinian territories -- citing “atrocities” that “Israel is doing to the Palestinians.

"Maybe Gaza is next for me, maybe [the] West Bank," said Harroun, whose Facebook wall bears the quote: “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”

Greg Tepper is a freelance journalist based in Israel. Ilan Ben Zion (@ilanbenzion) is a reporter for the Times of Israel.

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