A war monitor on Saturday said three pro-Iran fighters, including at least two Iraqis, were killed in an overnight air strike in eastern Syria near the Iraq border.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the strike occurred in Deir Ezzor province. Iran wields significant influence in the area, which is regularly targeted by Israel, and sometimes by the United States.
“Two of the dead were Iraqi nationals with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and the third was not identified,” the Observatory said, referring to a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups.
The Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, said an explosion was heard coinciding with the strike “in al-Bukamal countryside… a few kilometers away from Syrian-Iraqi borders.”
Iraq’s Sayyed al-Shuhada Brigades announced the death of a fighter in a strike “on Friday which targeted his vehicle during a reconnaissance patrol on the Iraqi-Syrian border,” accusing the US of being behind the attack.
Responsibility for the strike was not immediately claimed, but a spokesperson for the US-led military coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group of jihadists told AFP that “neither the coalition nor US forces carried out overnight strikes in Deir Ezzor.”
The Observatory said that several hours before the strike, drones flew over the area.
With AFP
