Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State in Syria are training members of the group to fly in three captured fighter jets, a group monitoring the war said on Friday, saying it was the first time that the militant group had taken to the air.
Canada is assembling a camp in Kuwait to launch its own air campaign over Iraq, sending six CF-18 fighters, two surveillance craft and a refuelling aircraft to help the U.S.-led coalition's air strikes against Islamic State. The government says Canada will be in a position to begin air strikes against Islamic State at some point within the last seven days of October.
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(Who are Islamic State? Get caught up with The Globe's primer)
JETS: FIRST SIGN OF ISLAMISTS USING WARPLANES
Islamic State has been flying the planes over the captured al-Jarrah military airport east of Aleppo, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the report.
U.S-led forces are bombing Islamic State bases in Syria and Iraq. The group has regularly used weaponry captured from the Syrian and Iraqi armies and has overrun several military bases but this was the first time it had been able to pilot warplanes.
'They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for [former Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein,' Abdulrahman 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,' he said, citing witnesses in northern Aleppo province near the base, which is 70 kilometres south of Turkey.
It was not clear whether the jets were equipped with weaponry or whether the pilots could fly longer distances in the planes, which witnesses said appeared to be MiG 21 or MiG 23 models 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.
(Canada in Kuwait: Read more about the unfolding Iraq mission)
BRITAIN: A 14TH-CENTURY TREASON LAW REVISITED
Britain may use a medieval law dating to 1351 to charge citizens with treason if they go to fight with Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.
Security officials say some 500 Britons - largely with Muslim immigrant backgrounds - are believed to be fighting in Iraq and Syria, though the true figure could be much greater and security officials worry that those who return could carry out an attack on Britain.
Hammond said any British citizen who had sworn personal allegiance to Islamic State could have committed an offense under the Treason Act of 1351, passed during the reign of England's King Edward III. The maximum sentence for treason in Britain is life imprisonment. It was death until 1998.
The last person to be hanged for treason in Britain was William Joyce, a propagandist for Nazi Germany nicknamed Lord Haw Haw who broadcast to Britain during the Second World War and who was executed in 1946.
With reports from Steven Chase and Kim Mackrael
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Posted by Unknown on Friday, October 17, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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