The UK continues to hit Daesh hard as Royal Air Force fly intensive armed reconnaissance missions in Syria and Iraq, striking a number of terrorist targets.

While RAF Tornado, Typhoon and Reaper patrols have covered large swathes of Daesh-held territory in both Iraq and Syria, a particular focus for their recent air strikes has been in northern Iraq, where the Kurdish security forces continue to consolidate their significant victory over the terrorists at Sinjar in November.

On Friday 11 December, two Typhoon FGR4s from RAF Akrotiri provided close air support to Kurdish peshmerga operating near Mosul. Our aircraft used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy a heavy machine-gun position that was firing on the peshmerga, then employed two more Paveway IVs against a group of Daesh extremists as they attacked the Kurdish troops.

Further west, south of Sinjar, a Reaper similarly supported Kurdish forces, and its crew conducted a successful attack with a GBU-12 guided bomb on a sniper team which had opened fire from a building. A large secondary explosion resulted from the strike, which indicates that the building probably also contained a large stockpile of ammunition or explosives.

The Reaper subsequently delivered a second successful attack, striking a group of terrorists with a Hellfire missile as they set up rocket launchers.

That night, Typhoons returned to patrol over the Mosul region, and attacked a Daesh mortar position with a Paveway IV.