Fighting between pro-Iranian groups supporting the Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces killed 13 people, mostly civilians, a war monitor said Friday.
Six children were among the victims of intense shelling of Dahla in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Fighting erupted on Wednesday when pro-Iranian fighters attacked Kurdish-held areas, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also reported that 11 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in Dahla.
The SOHR said pro-Iran fighters carried out a “massacre” that “resulted in the death of 11 people, including women and six children,” in Dahla.
Two members of Iranian-backed militias were meanwhile killed and three wounded in shelling by the SDF targeting al-Bulil village on the western bank of the Euphrates river, the monitor said.
The US-backed SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated the Islamic State jihadist group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.
Arab-majority Deir Ezzor province, a resource-rich region which borders Iraq, is bisected by the Euphrates river and home to dozens of local tribal communities, some of whose fighters joined the SDF in its battle against IS.
On Wednesday, pro-Iran groups supervised by Syrian government officers succeeded in crossing the Euphrates, coming dangerously close to the al-Omar oil fields where American troops are based, the SOHR said.
Pro-Iran fighters were subsequently pushed back to the opposite side of the Euphrates following fighting that left seven dead, among them an SDF fighter, three pro-Iran militia men and three civilians, it added.
The fighting comes amid growing regional tensions between Iran and its allies on one side, and Israel and its backer Washington on the other.
With AFP
