For the third consecutive day, the Itamilradar website, which specializes in tracking military flights over the Mediterranean, monitored a Turkish cargo plane Lockheed C-130E (71-1468) Turkish Air Force on a trip to the Al-Watiya Air Force Base from Konya, Turkey.
The site said that the military plane left the Al-Watiya base at about 8:30 am, and the site had indicated that during the past two months, it had followed at least 30 military flights from Turkey to Libya using different aircraft (C-130 & A400).
It is noteworthy that the Al-Watiya base had been subjected to airstrikes on the 5th of July, and learned from 218News sources at the time that a series of strikes targeting the base were carried out by a French Rafale fighter, 70 kilometers away.
The same source revealed that the airstrikes targeted two Turkish defense systems that were inside the base, one of which was completely destroyed, while the other survived, indicating that the range of these air systems is 40 km, a difference of 30 km from the extent that the base was bombed.
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper previously cited Turkish media as saying that the Turkish army is preparing to deploy a new defense system at Al-Watiya Air Force Base after the raid that targeted the previous system.
According to the newspaper, the Turkish army “will soon install new air defense systems, and it will activate the S125 system that we recently acquired from Ukraine over the airspace of the city of Sirte, and some areas of strategic importance for the Turks in western Libya.”
The activity of Turkish military cargo aircraft towards Al-Watiya base coincides with the continuous build-up of GNA forces for a possible attack on the city of Sirte and the Al-Jufra area.
