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Islamic State 'training pilots to fly fighter jets' | Islamic State 'training pilots to fly fighter jets' |
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Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State are training its members in Syria to fly three captured fighter jets, according to a UK-based activist group that monitors the conflict. | Iraqi pilots who have joined Islamic State are training its members in Syria to fly three captured fighter jets, according to a UK-based activist group that monitors the conflict. |
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said witnesses had seen the planes being flown around a military airport in Aleppo. | |
Meanwhile, Iraqi forces have launched an attack on IS militants near Tikrit. | |
The city was among the areas in Syria and Iraq seized by IS this year. | |
Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the SOHR, said IS was using Iraqi officers who were pilots under ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to train fighters in Syria. | |
"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. | |
It is not known how many Iraqi pilots are said to have defected. | |
However, IS have three planes which they captured earlier on the ground in Aleppo and Raqqa, the BBC's Sally Nabil in Cairo reports. | |
Kobane battle | |
The Iraqi government says its troops have gained ground to the north and west of Tikrit and cut an important IS supply route. | |
Correspondents say that past efforts by the government to regain territory in the area have ended in failure. | |
Meanwhile Kurdish forces, backed by US-led air strikes, are continuing to fight militants in the northern Syrian town of Kobane. | |
The battle for Kobane, which is also known as Ayn al-Arab, is regarded as a major test of whether the US-led coalition's air campaign can push back IS. |