Six pro-Iranian fighters were killed in a “probably Israeli” attack that targeted their positions in a province in eastern Syria overnight, an NGO said.
According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, the attacks came when two Syrian soldiers were injured in an Israeli raid on their positions further west, in the same Deir Ezzor province.
“Six pro-Iranian fighters were killed in a suspected Israeli raid” that targeted three positions of Tehran-aligned groups in the Boukamal region near the border with Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said.
According to the UK-based OSDH, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria, the attacks targeted three positions of Tehran-aligned groups in the Boukamal region, near the border with Iraq.
At the same time, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced that two soldiers were injured in an Israeli attack on army positions near the city of Deir Ezzor, a little further west.
“The Israeli enemy has carried out attacks on positions of our armed forces around the city of Deir Ezzor,” the ministry said in a statement. He reported “two injured soldiers and some property damage.”
The Syrian army and the pro-Iranian groups that have been fighting on the side of Bashar al-Assad since the war began in 2011 are heavily deployed in the Deir Ezzor region.
Since 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory, mainly targeting forces backed by Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of the Israeli state and the Syrian army.
But the Israeli army generally remains extremely silent about operations in Syria attributed to it.
On September 14, two Syrian soldiers were killed in an Israeli attack on their positions in Tartus in the west of the country.
The United States, which has hundreds of troops stationed in Syria, has also repeatedly attacked pro-Iranian groups based in Deir Ezzor in response to targeted attacks.
The war in Syria, sparked by the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, has left more than half a million dead and several million displaced.