ISTANBUL
Islamic State of Iraq and Levant now has three supersonic jet fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Friday.
The aircraft are a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 and a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23, along with another aircraft of the same type. The militants are being trained to fly the planes by experts formerly with the Iraqi military, the London-based human rights organization reported on its website.
The training courses are given at the airbase of al Jarrah -- also called the Kshish airbase. This airbase is located in the eastern countryside of Aleppo and considered the most important camp for ISIL in Syria.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Ali, a member of the Syrian opposition force Islamic Front, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that ISIL have captured four aircraft.
"ISIL have also captured several pilots of Syrian regime in Raqqa and those pilots are training the militants on how to fly the planes," Ali said.
ISIL currently controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.
It has besieged the Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, on the Turkish-Syrian border. An estimated 200,000 Syrian-Kurd refugees from the area have already fled from there into Turkey over the past three weeks.
The militant group is also blamed for making around 1.2 million Iraqis, including Turkmen, Arabs, Christians and Ezidis, refugees.
www.aa.com.tr/en
