MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Monday, the US carrier and its strike force sailed for a long-planned seven-month deployment to the Middle East, as tensions mounted following Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 130 people and France's retaliatory airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria over the weekend.
According to the Defense News newspaper, Washington discussed possibility of keeping the carrier in Europe for several days or longer, instead of sailing to the Persian Gulf, as was originally planned.
On Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle would head to the eastern Mediterranean offshore areas of Syria and Lebanon instead of the Persian Gulf to support military operations against the ISIL extremists.
