Friday 21 October –Tornados, Typhoons and a Reaper provided close air support to Iraqi and Kurdish forces around Mosul, striking nine terrorist targets including a truck-bomb, tunnels, mortars and a heavy machine-gun…

With Iraqi forces liberating the key towns of Qaraqosh and Bartallah east of Mosul, Royal Air Force aircraft have continued to provide close air support, including to Kurdish forces pressing against Mosul from the north.

A Reaper remotely piloted aircraft patrolled north of Mosul on Friday 21 October, using a Hellfire missile to destroy a Daesh mortar that had opened fire on Kurdish troops. The Reaper then moved south-east to support operations around Qaraqosh, where a coalition aircraft had spotted a fortified tunnel entrance. The Reaper’s crew were able to destroy this with a direct hit from a GBU-12 guided bomb. Meanwhile, Typhoons from RAF Akrotiri, operated to the north and east of the city. Near Khursabad, they worked in close cooperation with a coalition surveillance aircraft to destroy a second tunnel entrance, in which terrorists were known to be hiding. To the north of Mosul, they attacked two mortar teams and a heavy machine-gun, and, near Bartallah, they destroyed an armoured truck-bomb positioned in the path of the advancing Iraqi troops. Further south, in the Tigris valley, a pair of Tornados used a Brimstone missile to destroy an armed truck. They then used a second Brimstone to engage a group of terrorists operating amongst houses south-east of Mosul. No collateral damage was caused.