According to Syrian activist, Islamic State militants have been trained to fly three captured fighter jets and took flight on Friday for the first time, The Associated Press reported.
The IS has seized land in Syria and Iraq, and of lately have 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, according to the AP.
"They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for (former Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein," Abdulrahman said, the AP reported.
Witnesses reported the flights were at a low altitude and only lasted five to 10 minutes before landing, the Observatory said, according to the AP.
According to an Iraqi intelligence official, the government is aware of several ex-Iraqi military officers going to Syria to train militants with the Islamic State group, contrary to Western beliefs, the AP reported. The official also said the militants acquired warplanes from al-Tabaqa air base in Syria, but not when they toppled the Iraqi military in Mosul.
U.S-led forces are bombing Islamic State bases in Syria and Iraq, but the group has regularly used weaponry captured from the Syrian and Iraqi armies to overrun several military bases, the AP reported.
"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," Abdulrahman said, according to the AP.
It was not clear whether the jets were equipped with weaponry or whether the pilots could fly longer distances in the planes, which appeared to be MiG 21 or MiG 23 models captured from the Syrian military, the AP reported.
General Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, said he has no operational reports of IS militants flying jets in support of their forces, according to the AP. Austin also told Pentagon reporters he has no information about Iraqi pilots defecting to IS.
