Iraq to buy Russian jets

BBC:

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has told the BBC that he hopes jets from Russia and Belarus will turn the tide against rebels in the coming days.

"God willing within one week this force will be effective and will destroy the terrorists' dens," he said.

He said that the process of buying US jets had been "long-winded" and that the militants' advance could have been avoided if air cover had been in place.

Isis and its Sunni Muslim allies seized large parts of Iraq this month.

Mr Maliki was speaking to the BBC's Arabic service in his first interview for an international broadcaster since Isis - the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant - began its major offensive.

"I'll be frank and say that we were deluded when we signed the contract [with the US]," Mr Maliki said.

"We should have sought to buy other jet fighters like British, French and Russian to secure the air cover for our forces; if we had air cover we would have averted what had happened," he went on.

He said Iraq was acquiring second-hand jet fighters from Russia and Belarus "that should arrive in Iraq in two or three days".
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The problem with those jets is a lack of precision weapons and to be effective the jets need to be used with ground forces and Iraq right now is having trouble relying on its ground troops.