At least 14 fighters and civilians were killed in overnight airstrikes targeting their positions in the Deir ez-Zor region of eastern Syria, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Tuesday.
The Observatory did not immediately specify the source of the strikes in Deir ez-Zur, which is regularly targeted by Israeli airstrikes and occasionally by American ones.
A US military official told Agence France-Presse that Washington “did not carry out any airstrikes Monday night into Tuesday.”
The Observatory reported that “a communications official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and two of his companions, along with nine Iraqi fighters belonging to armed groups, and two Syrian fighters were killed in the strikes.” Also killed was “a Syrian civilian engineer.”
The Iranian Embassy in Syria announced in a post on the “Ikh” platform the death of a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, while Iran’s official IRNA news agency blamed Israel for the attack that killed “Behrouz Vahidi in Deir ez-Zur.”
The Observatory stated that “ten were killed in airstrikes carried out by unknown warplanes that targeted a villa (…) in the city of Deir ez-Zur, used as a communications headquarters” by them, noting that the Syrian owner of the residential building was also killed in the strikes.
The same source mentioned that “the airstrikes took place a few hours after an Iranian transport plane arrived from Damascus at Deir ez-Zur military airport” on Monday evening, indicating that it was carrying “logistical and advanced technological materials and elements and figures from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” including the communications official who was killed.
Other sites in the area were also targeted, particularly in the nearby town of Al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, where four fighters were killed.
At least 34 people were injured in the strikes, including ten civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory.
Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in recent years.
These strikes intensified after the outbreak of war in Gaza following an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th.
In early February, at least 29 fighters, including six Hezbollah members, were killed in American airstrikes in Deir ez-Zur and Al-Mayadin, according to the Observatory.
Washington launched these strikes in response to the killing of three American soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan on January 28th.
