Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 18
Trend:
Russia’s Aerospace Force and Turkey’s Air Force are conducting the first joint air operation against the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group on the outskirts of the Al-Bab town in the Aleppo province Jan. 18, TASS quoted Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy, head of the main operations department of Russia’s General Staff, as saying.
“The air operation, agreed on with the Syrian government, involves nine warplanes of the Russian Aerospace Force, including four Sukhoi Su-24M, four Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft and one Sukhoi Su-34 bomber, as well as four F-16 and four F-4 fighters of Turkey’s Air Force. A total of 36 targets are planned to be hit,” he told reporters.
All the targets have been previously fixed by the two countries’ general staffs and their air force commands, according to Rudskoy.
“In the past two days, a reconnaissance mission involving unmanned aircraft and cosmic reconnaissance equipment was carried out in order to help fix the targets,” Rudskoy explained.
“The joint air strikes against the IS facilities, delivered by Russia and Turkey, have already proven highly effective,” he noted.