On Thursday 20 August, a Tornado patrol located two mechanical excavator vehicles near Mosul, which the ISIL terrorists were using to construct fortified positions to defend against the Kurdish peshmerga’s recent successful offensives in the area. Both of the vehicles were destroyed by our aircraft using Brimstone missiles.

Further south, an RAF Reaper was providing support that day to Iraqi army units; a large truck-bomb was spotted, positioned on the central reservation of a major road to threaten any advance by the Iraqi security forces along that route. A Hellfire missile destroyed the vehicle.

The Reaper’s crew then conducted surveillance against a building suspected of being a bomb-making location, where armed terrorists were seen moving a large number of sacks of home-made explosives, and preparing improvised explosive devices. Successful Hellfire attacks were conducted against the facility and the bomb-makers.