Bluish lights travelling quickly, stopped and then accelerated away in an instant.I was north of Baghdad in a very rural and desolate area. We were performing a surveillance operation. I observed three bluish white lights in a column formation (I would estimate spacing between objects to be 800m and the altitude to be 1600m). The objects were traveling from the south-by-south west to the north-by-north east. I brought this observation to my partner’s attention. Our first thought was someone had fired a few rockets, but the altitude and flight path was not consistent with such an event, although the speed of movement was. We watched as the object covered a distance of approximately 50k with consistency of speed, direction of travel and altitude. We were discussing amongst ourselves what they might be when in an instant they came to a complete halt. A fraction of a second after stopping, all three objects blinked and then accelerated out of site (The first appeared to be in a very steep if not completely vertical climb). The second object moved in what appeared to be a level trajectory due east. The last moved in what appeared to be a gradually increasing altitude north. It took approximately one second for the objects to be completely out of site. We switched to IR and still had no visual contact. Obviously, we discussed the issue amongst ourselves but did not report it to higher for obvious reasons. We have no idea what these objects were and unfortunately where unable to determine a shape.