The Il-76 that failed UN’s first aid air-drop in Syria was escorted by Russian Su-35s

Published on: February 26, 2016 at 10:43 AM

A Su-35 is visible in this screenshot from the video of the air drop.

WFP Il-76 was escorted by Russian Air Force Su-35s over Syria.

On Feb. 24, UN agency World Food Program, performed a first attempt to air-drop humanitarian aid to Syrians from high altitude using a Russian Il-76 airlifter.

However, the air-drop was largely a failure: out of 21 pallets dropped over Deir al-Zour, in the eastern part of Syria, 10 were unaccounted for, seven landed in no-man’s land and four were damaged.

Interestingly, the UN plane, departed from Amman, Jordan, and trackable online through ADS-B thanks to Flightradar24.com, was escorted by Russian Air Force Su-35S aircraft deployed to Hmeymim airbase.

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You can see at least one Su-35 Flanker in the video released after the air-drop.

Deir-ez-Zor aid drop by WFP Il-76, escorted by RuAF Su-35 Flankers yesterday pic.twitter.com/qt7vBknXpq

— BM-21 GRAD (@bm21_grad) February 25, 2016

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By David Cenciotti

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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.