Islamic State: Former Iraqi pilots training militants to fly captured warplanes

Updated

Former Iraqi pilots who have now joined Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria are training members of the group to fly captured fighter jets, a group monitoring the war says.

It is believed to be the first time the militant group has taken to the air.

The group has been flying the three planes over the captured al-Jarrah Syrian military airport east of Aleppo, Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said citing witnesses in Syria's northern Aleppo province.

"They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for [former Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein," he said.

"People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back."

It was not clear whether the jets were equipped with weaponry or whether the pilots could fly longer distances in the aircraft, which witnesses said appeared to be MiG 21 or MiG 23 warplanes captured from the Syrian military.

Pro-Islamic State Twitter accounts had previously posted pictures of captured jets in other parts of Syria, but the aircraft had appeared unusable, according to analysts and diplomats.

The countryside east of Aleppo city is one of the main bases for IS militants in Syria, where the al Qaeda offshoot controls up to a third of the country's territory.

The group has seized tracts of territory in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the report and US Central Command said it was not aware of IS flying jets in Syria.

"We're not aware of ISIL conducting any flight operations in Syria or elsewhere," Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said.

"We continue to keep a close eye on ISIL activity in Syria and Iraq and will continue to conduct strikes against their equipment, facilities, fighters and centres of gravity, wherever they may be."

US 'main effort' is to rid Iraq of IS

Confronting the Islamic State group in Iraq is the top priority for the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists, while air strikes in Syria are meant to disrupt the group's supply lines, the US commander overseeing the air war said.

"Iraq is our main effort and it has to be," General Lloyd Austin told a news conference at the Pentagon.

He also said there had been "encouraging" signs in recent days in the battle over the Syrian border town of Kobane, with US air strikes slowing the advance of Islamic State jihadists, but acknowledged it was still "highly possible" the town could fall to the extremists.

Australia's Chief of Joint Operations Rear Admiral David Johnston, told a briefing in Canberra that Australian jets had flown 43 sorties since combat operations began.

Australian Super Hornets increased their sorties over Iraq in the past week to allow the US and other coalition forces to concentrate their air strikes around the Syrian city of Kobane.

Bombs were dropped on at least two occasions, the latest of which resulted in the deaths of an unspecified number of IS fighters.

Iraqi security forces launched an operation on Friday aimed at regaining ground from the IS jihadist group north of the militant-held city of Tikrit, officials said.

Security forces backed by air support began "an operation to liberate areas north of the city of Tikrit," Ali Mussa, an adviser to the governor of Salaheddin province said.

An army lieutenant colonel also confirmed the launch of the operation north of the city, with security forces moving slowly toward the militant-held Baiji district due to bombs along the way.

The officer said forces were also advancing west of Tikrit, which was seized on June 11 during a sweeping Islamic State-led militant offensive.

While sources were positive about the operation, its scale was not immediately clear, and other efforts to regain ground in Salaheddin province have ended in failure after initial reports of success.



The IS group has pushed back Iraqi government forces in the western province of Anbar in recent weeks, prompting some officials to warn the entire region could fall to jihadists.

Reuters

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, air-force, syrian-arab-republic, iraq

First posted