4 Hezbollah members killed in strikes near Syria-Iraq border
Airstrikes target convoy, weapons depot after pro-Iran militia attack on US military base in Erbil; US denies it conducted defensive strikes; Aleppo hit in alleged Israeli strike
Three early Saturday morning airstrikes in eastern Syria near a strategic border crossing with Iraq killed four Hezbollah terrorists and two other Iran-backed militants, Iraqi militia groups said.
Hezbollah, a Lebanese terror group and an Iranian proxy, on Saturday confirmed the deaths of four of its members, saying they were killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” without elaborating further.
The strikes targeted an eight-truck convoy, destroying at least four trucks, said sources who have contacts with Syrian and Iraqi border officials. The officials said three buildings used by one of the Iranian-backed militia groups were also targeted.
A US military official said the US did not conduct any defensive strikes overnight.
The strikes on the border region of Boukamal came hours after an umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militants — known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq — claimed an attack on a US military base in the city of Erbil in northern Iraq.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose formation of armed groups affiliated with the Hashed al-Shaabi (also known as Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces or PMF), itself a coalition of former paramilitary forces integrated into Iraq’s regular armed forces, has claimed over a hundred attacks on US positions in Iraq and eastern Syria since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through southern communities massacring some 1,200 people and kidnapping 240 people to the Gaza Strip.
The group of militias has also claimed attacks on Israel, including on Thursday when an apparent explosive-laden drone believed to have been launched from Syria crashed in the southern Golan Heights. The unmanned aerial vehicle crashed near the moshav of Eliad in northern Israel, causing no injuries but some damage to a number of structures.
Last week, the group claimed it struck a “vital target” in the Mediterranean Sea several days prior. A source in the group told Al Jazeera that the target was the Karish gas rig off northern Israel’s coast.
The claims came shortly after the Israel Defense Forces announced it had downed a drone on December 15 over the sea near Lebanon as it approached Israeli airspace. The IDF did not elaborate further on where the drone was launched from, or why it published the incident a week after it happened.
Also Saturday, Syrian media outlets reported an alleged Israeli airstrike in the Aleppo area in northern Syria in the afternoon.
#Syria: at least 6 successive explosions were heard amidst Israeli bombardment on #Aleppo International Airport (which didn't reopen since last strike in October). Looks like a massive strike. pic.twitter.com/UjpiavpXGE
— Qalaat Al Mudiq (@QalaatAlMudiq) December 30, 2023
Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, citing a military source, said “material losses” were caused by the alleged Israeli airstrike on Aleppo. Images circulating on social media show large plumes of smoke in the area.
The pro-government Sham FM radio said air defenses engaged the strike over Aleppo International Airport.
Israel has for years carried out aerial attacks on Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it began supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war that started in 2011. Israel rarely comments on these individual strikes, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran to expand its presence there.
Earlier Saturday, the Israeli army did confirm strikes in Syria after two rockets fired from the country fell in the Golan Heights.
“Following the report regarding sirens sounding in northern Israel, a short while ago two launches that were identified crossing from Syria fell in an open area,” the army said Friday. “The IDF is striking the sources of fire.”
The army also said it struck “terror infrastructure” belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, including a launch site used by the terror group, following a number of cross-border attacks earlier Friday.
In Saturday’s strikes in eastern Syria, the Iraqi militias said the two other fatalities were Syrian. Another two were injured, they added.
However, a local commander with Hashed al-Shaabi denied that any of the groups’ fighters deployed near the Syrian borders had been killed or wounded.
The UK-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the militants’ convoy targeted had arrived from Iraq to Syria as well as a location where a militia affiliated with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was training.
It added that the strikes killed nine people, three Syrians and six people from other nationalities. The organization, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false and inaccurate reporting.
Meanwhile, an activist collective that covers news in the area, Deir Ezzor 24, said the airstrikes hit two militant posts and a weapons warehouse that it says was recently stocked with rocket launchers and munitions.
Fighters allied with Iran, including Hezbollah, now hold sway in vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital.
A tally by US military officials has counted over 100 attacks against its troops in Iraq and Syria since October 17. Most of the attacks have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
Washington has warned that it will respond against Iran-backed militia positions following the surge of attacks over the past two months.
US President Joe Biden last week ordered the US military to carry out strikes on Iranian-backed Iraqi groups following a rocket attack that wounded three US troops.
The spike in tension has put Baghdad in a delicate situation. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has tried to ease the strain between the militant groups that helped him reach power and the US where Iraq’s foreign reserves are housed.
The Boukamal region in Deir el-Zour, Syria, along the Iraqi border, has been a strategic area for Iran-backed militants after it was taken back from the extremist Islamic State group in 2019. US coalition forces have conducted strikes targeting convoys there prior to recent tensions.
