Monday 30 January – Tornados engaged two groups of terrorists south of Mosul, while a Reaper destroyed two vehicles in western Iraq…

With eastern Mosul liberated from Daesh, Iraqi forces have conducted operations along the approaches to the western half of the city, supported by coalition aircraft.

A pair of Royal Air Force Tornados assisted Iraqi troops on Monday 30 January, some ten miles south of Mosul, on the west bank of the Tigris. The Tornados spotted machine-gun fire being directed at an Iraqi unit, and on investigating were able to identify a number of Daesh terrorists divided into three small groups. The Tornados used a pair of Paveway IV guided bombs to kill the members of two of these groups, while an attack by another coalition aircraft accounted for the third. In western Iraq, some forty miles south-west of the Al Asad airfield, a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft meanwhile tracked two trucks carrying several Daesh fighters. Both vehicles were struck in succession by Hellfires from the Reaper, and a series of secondary explosions from the vehicles’ cargo ensued for several minutes afterwards.