Five pro-Iran fighters killed in Syria drone strike near Iraqi border – war monitor

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Five Iran-backed fighters were killed on Sunday in a drone strike in Syria’s east, near the Iraqi border, a war monitor said, adding it was not clear yet who was behind the attack.

“Five pro-Iranian fighters were killed and others were injured, some severely… after an unknown drone targeted the military vehicle they were in… near the Syrian-Iraqi border,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The strike occurred in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, where Iran wields significant influence and which is said to regularly be targeted by Israel and the United States, according to the Britain-based monitor, which is run by a single person and has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.

In June, three pro-Iran fighters, including at least two Iraqis, were killed in an overnight airstrike in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, the Observatory had reported at the time.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel — which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria — is believed to have carried out hundreds of strikes mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.

Earlier in August, a source close to Hezbollah said that Israel had carried out strikes on a convoy of trucks crossing from Syria into Lebanon. The terror group has been known to use the area to smuggle Iranian weapons into Lebanon.

Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah have bolstered President Bashar Assad’s forces during Syria’s civil war.

The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered the conflict, which has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and jihadists.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.