Kurdistan residents see missiles in sky; KRG says hard to know what they were

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Kurdish official said Thursday that the Kurdistan Region does not have the equipment to know whether a warplane, missile or drone had passed across its airspace, following public sightings of what appear to have been missiles.

“We do not have the military radar system to unveil which thing crossed through Kurdistan’s  air space, whether it was a warplane, missile or unmanned drone,” Jabar Yawar, chief of staff at the Peshmerga ministry, told Rudaw.

“We do not know from where it took off or what it was targeting,” he added.

Residents of Koya in Kurdistan’s Erbil province have taken pictures of what appear to be missiles in the sky.There has been speculation they were missiles fired by Russia at ISIS targets in Syria.

But Yawar said it was not possible to confirm “that these were warplanes or missiles from Russia.”

Russia has been launching missiles at ISIS positions in Syria from the Caspian Sea.

It has so far launched 26 missiles at targets in Syria from four warships in the Caspian Sea in the first major combined assault across the air and ground in Moscow's escalating campaign in war-torn Syria, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Meanwhile, the first joint intelligence meeting among Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia on countering ISIS took place Tuesday in Baghdad, but without any Kurdish leader taking part, according to a Kurdish MP in the Iraqi parliament.

Lavrov had said the Kurds would be represented, but in an earlier comment to Rudaw Yawar had said that the “Kurdistan region is unaware of the four-direction coalition, and has no member there.”