BEIRUT — The Islamic State group is test flying, with the help of former Iraqi air force pilots, several fighter jets captured earlier from air bases belonging to the Syrian military, a Syrian activist group said Friday.
The report by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights could not be independently confirmed, and U.S. official said they had no reports of Islamic State militants flying jets in support of their forces on the ground.
The new development came as the Islamic State group in Iraq pressed its offensive on the strategic city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The militants appeared to be taking advantage of the focus of U.S.-led airstrikes on the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, along the border with Turkey, to concentrate on their second front in Iraq.
The Observatory said that the planes, seen flying over the Jarrah air base in the countryside of Aleppo province in thought Syria this week, are thought to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets.
Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Observatory, said the planes have been flying at a low altitude, “apparently to avoid being detected by Syrian military radar in the area.”
Abdurrahman said Islamic State members were being trained by Iraqi officers who had joined the group and who were once pilots under Saddam Hussein.
