Iraqi Pilots Accidentally Deliver Food, Water And Ammunition To ISIS Militants
As the war in Syria between ISIS and various other groups, including soldiers loyal to the Assad regime rages on, the war in Iraq between ISIS and the Kurds is also heating up.
But just a couple of weeks back an unfortunate incident took place when, according to an NBC News report, Iraqi air force pilots mistakenly delivered food, water and ammunition to ISIS militants on a mission that was meant to supply their own service members with the badly needed supplies.
A member of the Iraqi parliament, Hakim Al-Zamili, who is also a senior security official, told NBC.
“Some pilots, instead of dropping these supplies over the area of the Iraqi army, threw it over the area that is controlled by ISIS fighters. Those soldiers were in deadly need of these supplies, but because of the wrong plans of the commanders in the Iraqi army and lack of experience of the pilots, we in a way or another helped ISIS fighters to kill our soldiers.”
Another Iraqi official, a brigadier-general in Iraq’s Defense Ministry also confirmed to NBC that Iraqi pilots had mistakenly armed and supplied ISIS instead of their own soldiers, saying it was due to pilots who were “young and new.”
The general unreliability of the Iraqi army has been a big issue since U.S. President Barack Obama pulled American ground troops out of the country, and that move had led to ISIS gaining more and more control of huge swathes of land in Iraq.
According to the Obama administration, having American boots on the ground is not the way to beat ISIS, as Obama thinks it’s a better idea to bolster forces on the ground already against the surge of the Islamic State.
Despite renewed air strikes carried out by a U.S.-led coalition ISIS seem to go from strength to strength in its quest to impose radical Islam in the Middle East as well as further afield.
