Watch ISIS Surveillance Drones Film the Battlefields of Aleppo

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Watch ISIS Surveillance Drones Film the Battlefields of Aleppo

Just another piece of war tech the insurgents are wielding.

A video uploaded today to an ISIS-linked YouTube account shows what appears to be footage captured by aerial drone. The four-minute clip features peaceful images of an annihilated Aleppo, as the drone hovers hundreds of feet in the air, far from the chaos, cut with visceral battle footage of fighters running in between the bombed out streets below.

Since the Syrian war began, Aleppo has been a coveted stronghold where fierce fighting between Assad forces, Free Syrian Army, and now ISIS rage daily. Giving that hellscape an aerial perspective makes the fighting all the more raw; from above, we see a city in utter ruin.

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It's been previously reported that ISIS was in possession of surveillance drones used during ongoing and brutal operations against the Syrian Bashir al-Assad regime, Free Syrian Army brigades, and allied airstrikes. Indeed, not long ago, Assad forces reportedly shot down an ISIS reconnaissance drone hovering over the Deir Ezzor Military Airport.

But the video is showcasing a piece of technology increasingly seen on the battlefields of Sham. It's not immediately clear how ISIS started owning surveillance drones. Something like the Aeryon Scout, a market standard for military quadcopter surveillance drones, costs as much as $60,000.

One Canadian ISIS fighter told me last the summer that the insurgent group came into the possession of large caches of American military technologies.

Related: The US Brought Its Islamic State Bombing to Social Media

"There were brothers walking around with M4 carbines, with ACOGs and reflex sights," Turaab communicated to me at the time. "M16 is extremely common now."

When I asked him what other technologies he came across, he wrote, "I hope you have a good imagination haha."​