New Delhi, Apr 5 (UNI) Hours after US President Donald Trump said US Armed Forces had ‘rescued and retrieved’ two missing pilots whose F-15 fighter jet was shot down by Iranian forces on Saturday, an Iranian Army spokesman claimed on Sunday that they had ‘foiled’ a US attempt to rescue a downed pilot.
Spokesman of the Khatam al-Anbia Central Headquarters of Iran claimed that two Black Hawk helicopters and one C-130 military transport plane of the US had been shot down in a coordinated operation by Iranian forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Army, Basij units, and police forces in south of Isfahan in Central Iran.
(The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters (KCHQ) is a top-level Iranian military command based in Tehran responsible for planning and coordinating joint operations between the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It operates under the General Staff of the Armed Forces to command the forces.)
Iranian authorities also released several photos and videos showing the wreckage of a US military aircraft destroyed in Isfahan. However, it could not be verified if the photos and videos were indeed those of the downed US aircraft.
Trump said on his social media platform on Sunday morning that in a ‘miraculous search and rescue operation,’ the United States has rescued and safely ‘retrieved’ from deep inside Iranian territory the two fighter pilots who went missing on Saturday after Iranian forces shot down an F-15 American fighter aircraft.
The Isfahan incident followed desperate efforts by US forces to infiltrate Central Iran and extract the pilot, the spokesman was quoted by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency as saying. The news agency, however, did not identify the spokesman.
The spokesman said a joint operation involving the aerospace and ground forces, volunteer Basij units, and law enforcement servicemen successfully intercepted and neutralized the incoming aircraft.
He said the US President had attempted to downplay the incident by claiming that a special operation has been carried out to rescue the downed pilot, according to Tasnim.
UNI
