RUSSIA:Two Russian Tu-95 bombers made unusually long sorties over the North Sea on Thursday morning, forcing both Norway and Britain to scramble fighter jets to follow the Russian planes, Norway's armed forces said.
The Russian bombers stayed in international air space during their flight, which took them as far south as the region between Norway's Stavanger and Aberdeen in Scotland - centres of the North Sea oil industry.
The incident, the latest of several such sorties over past days, occurred during a period of heightened diplomatic tensions between Russia and Britain over Moscow's refusal to extradite a murder suspect.
"It's a long time since they [ Russian bombers] have been that far south," John Inge Oegland, spokesman for Norway's armed forces, said. "I would say that is rather unusual.
"Since they were so far south, Britain's Royal Air Force followed the same procedure and went up to identify them," he added.
When Russian military planes approach Norwegian air space, Norway scrambles fighters to meet and follow them.
Russia's air force commander said this week that such sorties were training flights for the long-range bombers.
"The pilots flew on routes used for international flights. We strictly followed international agreements on the use of airspace," Col Yuri Pomelov, an information officer for the Russian military, was quoted as saying by Interfax yesterday.
Norway said it was not unusual for Russian military planes to fly over international waters across the Barents Sea and then either turn south into the Norwegian Sea or continue flying west over the Atlantic, before turning around.
- (Reuters)