As of the 30th of September the UK has now officially started dropping bombs in Iraq. This news comes just a few days after the decision for the United Kingdom to become involved in the fight against ISIL and ISIS along with 40 other nations. The first flight of two Tornado GR4 fighter jets yielded no results as the jets returned to their base in the south of Cyprus having found no targets.
On Tuesday however one of the jets is said to have dropped a “Paveway IV Guided bomb” after being asked to help Kurdish troops in north-western Iraq. This was used to destroy an ISIL heavy weapon which was firing on Kurdish troops. Following this attack the jets identified an ISIL armed pick-up truck in the surrounding areas and went on to attack this vehicle with a “Brimstone missile”.
The Ministry of Defence has since made a statement in London saying: “an initial assessment indicates that both precision strikes were successful” and then went on to say that both jets have now safely returned to their base in Akrotiri.
These RAF attacks are said to have helped Kurdish forces retake an “important border crossing” located in Rabi near Iraq’s boarder with Syria. These strikes have been made on what is said to be the RAF’s sixth armed patrol from their Cyprus base.
This attack will likely be the first of many as the defence secretary Michael Fallon has said these bombing patrols could go on for years. This is the first time Britain has dropped bombs in Iraq for 11 years after its invasion in 2003 to dispose of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist government.