MOSCOW: Russian spies have caught up to 12,000 trucks believed to be carrying oil on the Turkish-Iraqi border.
It is widely believed that most Islamic State oil goes to Turkey and is sold at low prices there.
Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy said: ‘The imagery was made in the vicinity of Zakho (a city in Iraqi Kurdistan), there were 11,775 tankers and trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border.
‘It must be noted that oil from both Iraq and Syria come through this [Zakho] checkpoint.
‘According to satellite data, the number of oil tankers moving through the northern route towards the refinery in the [Turkish] city of Batman has considerably diminished.’
The Russian Air Force in Syria has destroyed around 2,000 tankers used by the Islamic militants for oil transportation. In the last week, Russian war planes took out 17 convoys of oil tankers.
The move has forced terrorists to look for new routes for oil transportation.
