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Chinese-made launcher said to have been supplied by Qatar against US wishes

An advanced surface-to-air missile believed to have been supplied to Syrian rebels by Qatar against American wishes has been filmed in the hands of Isil jihadists, raising the threat to allied operations in Iraq.

A militant was shown firing a Chinese-made FN6 shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile, with a later image suggesting it had brought down an Iraqi army helicopter.

The attack was said to have happened during the battle for Baiji, a town that is host to Iraq's biggest oil refinery, north of Baghdad.

The biggest worry is the greater power of the FN6, a modern weapon that is still being manufactured, compared with the older Russian-made missiles previously seen in the hands of moderate rebels and the ISIS.

The helicopter the militants claimed to have brought down, an Mi-35M, was of a type provided to Iraq by Russia in the last year and is supposed to be fitted with defence systems.

The ability to cause serious damage to Syrian and Iraqi - and now American - air operations is often described as a "game-changer" in the wars in both countries.

Syrian rebels have occasionally managed to bring down regime helicopters and even jets, but only rarely, as they have only been able to buy and pillage redundant Soviet-era models from regime stocks.

The new missile raises the threat to US Apache helicopters, which have returned to Iraq as part of the US-led coalition support for the Iraqi army.

"The US Apaches deployed to Baghdad will have countermeasures, but I cannot comment on whether they would be more effective than the ones on Iraq's new Mi-35Ms," said Jeremy Binnie, of IHS Jane's, who spotted the Isil video.

The United States has argued vehemently against giving Syrian rebels surface-to-air missiles despite the Assad regime's bombardments of the civilian population, precisely for fear they would end up in the hands of jihadists, as did Stinger missiles provided to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

But last year The New York Times reported that Qatar, an American ally which is already under fire for its support of more extreme factions among the rebels, delivered a batch.

The Iraqi government maintains there is no threat to civilian aviation. Shoulder-mounted missiles are not dangerous to airliners at normal heights, unlike the vehicle-launched BUK missile thought to have brought down the MH17 passenger plane over Ukraine in July.

They are dangerous to planes taking off and landing, however, and the large quantities of such missiles that have gone missing during Arab Spring uprisings continue to cause alarm. Baghdad airport is protected by a broad perimeter, and pilots use a special "corkscrew" approach to keep them safe from missile-launchers like the FN6.