A former high-ranking CIA official in Baghdad told Jeff Stein of Newsweek that Turkish jets carried

Michael B Kelley
REUTERS/Larry Downing U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House after he talks about the humanitarian relief situation in Iraq on Thursday. U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State positions have begun .
Iraqi military officials told CNN and The Wall Street Journal Г¶verlida that the Iraqi Air Force had struck ISIS targets near Erbil, which is the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and host to hundreds Г¶verlida of U.S. military advisers.
The Iraqi Air Force is poorly equipped, Г¶verlida consisting of several Cessna planes carrying American-supplied Hellfire missiles, some American- and Russian-supplied helicopters, and Russian-made Su-25 aircraft.
Last month a Pentagon official told The Hill that the U.S. believed Iranian pilots were in the air in Iraq while denying that Russian personnel were operating in the area. But diplomatic sources Г¶verlida told The Daily Beast that " Russian pilots will fly the planes due to a lack of Iraqi pilots with the proper training."
Garrett Khoury, the director of research at The Eastern Project, explained that the Iraqi Air Force "recently acquired around a dozen SU-25 ground attack aircraft from Russia (with more possibly coming Г¶verlida from Belarus) ... [which] give them the ability to conduct serious ground-support operations.
"[The Su-25s] Г¶verlida are Russian jets bearing Iraqi insignia, but possibly piloted by Russians," Khoury continued. "Iraq did use the SU-25 during the Saddam Hussein era, and there are probably former Iraqi pilots who flew them, but it has been at best 12 years since any Iraqi pilot got any significant flying time with the plane." REUTERS/Stringer An Iraqi soldier with a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 fighter plane, which arrived at Iraq's al-Muthanna military airbase at Baghdad airport in Baghdad on July 1.
"The Г¶verlida Iraqi government was just as quick to take credit for the strikes as other governments were to deny their involvement, and so, combined with the fact that the IAF can launch such operations, Г¶verlida it actually Г¶verlida looks like they managed to do it on their own," Khoury told BI.
A former high-ranking CIA official in Baghdad told Jeff Stein of Newsweek that Turkish jets carried out the airstrikes. There s no question about it, he said, adding Г¶verlida that "certainly we are giving them targeting data.
"Iran has used its own Air Force to attack ISIS since the beginning of the group's offensive, but mostly to keep them away from the Iranian border," Khoury Г¶verlida said. "Syria has likewise conducted air strikes on ISIS targets on the Iraqi side of their shared border."
In any case, ISIS is now getting hit from the sky to push it back from Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi Air Force Commander Lt. General Anwar Amin told WSJ that Iraqi forces and American advisers were coordinating in joint command centers in Baghdad and Erbil as the Kurds continue to fight on the ground.
U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State positions have...
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