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OTTAWACanadas military role in Iraq has flown into a fog of secrecy, with a hidden price tag and vague details of the missions Canadian aircraft are flying.

That concern was driven home Thursday when a top commander revealed that Canadian fighter jets had helped support the drop of humanitarian supplies over Iraq but refused to provide any specifics.

Col. Daniel Constable, Canadian commander of joint task force Iraq, boasted about the Canadian role in escorting another nations transport aircraft on a humanitarian mission to drop water, tents and blankets to beleaguered Iraqi civilians.

But in a Thursday briefing he declined to say how many CF-18s took part, where or when it happened or the amount of aid that was dropped.

Its a matter of operational security, Constable said in a teleconference call.

Canadian officials instead referred journalists to the U.S. military for answers, though there was nothing on the website of the U.S. Central Command about the mission.

Later in the day, Canadian military staff said CF-18s were supporting an air drop conducted by the Australians, a mission that the Australian defence department had revealed in a news release two days earlier.

Speaking on background, a military official said countries involved in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, are reluctant to provide detailed information about their roles for fear it could spark a retaliatory attack by ISIL sympathizers. That fear was spurred by the murders of two Canadian soldiers here in Canada in October by radicalized assailants.

Those attacks came after the Conservative government dispatched the military to join international efforts to stem the spread of Islamic State, an Al Qaeda splinter group in Iraq and Syria.

Still, the reluctance on the part of Canadians to reveal more casts a further shroud over the ongoing mission, which involves nine aircraft and 600 support personnel operating in Kuwait, plus a small team of military advisers in Iraq.

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Canada's Iraq mission hits fog of secrecy