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Military drills

Chinese strategic bombers join Beijing’s sweeping drills around Taiwan

The drills started on August 4 and were supposed to end in the mid-afternoon of August 7, but then they were prolonged

BEIJING, August 8. /TASS/. China’s People’s Liberation Army employed H-6 strategic bombers (a copy of Soviet Tu-16 aircraft) in its large-scale drills around Taiwan, as follows from a video released by China’s Eastern Theater Command on Monday.

The video footage shows at least one strategic bomber of this class: an H-6K warplane, one of the bomber’s latest modifications, armed with two cruise missiles.

The video clip shows the bomber flying over unnamed water area escorted by fighter jets.

The Chinese troops switched to sweeping live-fire drills with missile launches in six water areas around Taiwan on August 4. The maneuvers kicked off at 12:00 local time (07:00 a.m. Moscow time) and were expected to end in the mid-afternoon of August 7. However, as China’s Defense Ministry reported, the drills are set to last at least one more day.

The news about the Chinese Amy’s maneuvers appeared several minutes after a plane carrying US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touched down in Taipei Songshan Airport on the evening of August 2. In experts’ estimates, the current maneuvers will surpass by their scope similar drills held during the crisis in the Taiwan Strait in 1996-1997.

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