US-led coalition aircrafts bombing ISIL militants in Syria have been re-routed at least once in the last six days to avoid a close encounter with Russian planes, Pentagon spokesman said on Wednesday.
The United States and its allies have been waging a year-long air campaign against ISIL terrorist group in Syria and across the border in neighboring Iraq.
Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month, and has largely focused on hitting other rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "We've had an instance at least where there's been action taken to make sure we didn't have an unsafe separation of space," said Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. "We have had to do re-routing of the course of an airplane." Davis said the re-routing has occurred since Oct. 1.
In the video conference between U.S. and Russian military officials which focused on ways to keep air crews safe as they conduct parallel military campaigns with competing objectives he declined to provide further details including whether the aircrafts involved were manned or drones or how often the modification had happened or where; Reuters reported.
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