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ISIS shoots down Iraqi helicopter | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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An Iraqi army helicopter flies over the city of Baaquba, the capital of Iraq’s Diyala province, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq.
(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)


An Iraqi army helicopter flies over the city of Baaquba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

An Iraqi army helicopter flies over the city of Baaquba, the capital of Iraq’s Diyala province, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq.
(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Baghdad, AP—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants shot down an Iraqi military helicopter, officials said Saturday, killing the two pilots on board and raising fresh concerns about the extremists’ ability to attack aircraft amid ongoing US-led coalition airstrikes.

The attack happened late Friday in the Shi’ite holy city of Samarra, about 60 MILES (95 kilometers) north of Baghdad. A senior defense ministry official told The Associated Press the Sunni militants used a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to shoot down the EC635 helicopter on the outskirts of the city.

An army official corroborated the information. Both spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

The EC635, built by Airbus Helicopters, is used for transportation, surveillance and combat.

The militants shot down at least two other Iraqi military helicopters near the city of Beiji in October. Some fear the militants may have captured ground-to-air missiles capable of shooting down airplanes when they overran Iraqi and Syrian army bases this summer.

European airlines including Virgin Atlantic, KLM and Air France, US carrier Delta Air Lines and Dubai-based Emirates changed their commercial flight plans over the summer to avoid Iraqi airspace.

ISIS holds about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-styled caliphate.

In Syria, meanwhile, an activist group and a jihadist website said ISIS’s police force beheaded four men in the central province of Homs for insulting God.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the four were beheaded Friday in the province’s east, without elaborating.

A jihadist website said the “Islamic police in the state of Homs” carried out a court sentence against the four in the presences of onlookers. Grisly photos posted on the website showed each of the four blindfolded men kneeling, their hands tied behind their backs, as a masked man in a black uniform hit their necks with a cleaver.

ISIS governs its territory according to its radical, violent interpretation of Shari’a law. It has carried out other mass killings and beheadings, often recorded and posted online.