Iraq grounds northern flights over missiles launched at Syria

Just to make sure the ISIS terrorists on the ground got the message, Russian airmen on one mission inscribed the side of their bombs with the slogan “That’s for Paris”.

Iraq closed its northern airspace to commercial flights yesterday for at least two days because of military traffic from Russia’s air campaign in neighbouring Syria, a spokesman for Erbil International Airport said.

Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said 18 long-range missiles were launched on seven IS targets in the Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces on 20 November.

On Friday, Russian cruise missiles fired from the Caspian Sea passed over northern Iraq on the way to targets in Syria.

The bomb is now waiting to be dispatched from Syria and follows the news that Isis were responsible for last week’s Paris attacks as well as the Russian plane crash in Egypt.

A U.S.-led coalition is also striking the Islamic State group in Syria, but is not co-ordinating its efforts with Assad or Russian Federation, beyond communicating with Moscow in order to prevent midair mishaps.

The advisory, contained in a NOTAM for the Baghdad flight information, warns of cruise missile activity, crossing the Kurdistan region from the Caspian Sea to Syria.

Russian Federation began bombing in Syria in September at the request of its longstanding ally President Bashar al-Assad.

Putin praised the Russian operation in Syria but said it was “still not sufficient” to wipe out the jihadists in the country and that a “large volume of work” lay ahead.

Sulaimaniyah airport director Tahir Abdullah said the decision was taken “because of the intensification of Russian missile attacks on Daesh strongholds in Syria”, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group. This is a move that, according to Shoigu, leaves ISIS without $1.5 million in daily income from lost oil sales.

Mr Shoigu said that the Russian air force had conducted 522 sorties and deployed more than 100 cruise missiles since Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Russian Head of State Vladimir Putin promised to hound and “punish” the group behind the ISIS group that bombed a traveler jet over Sinai last month, killing all 224 people on board.