Up to 30 said dead in Syria strikes, including 8 Iran Guards fighters, top commander
Some 30 people were killed, among them at least nine pro-Iranian fighters including a commander, in overnight strikes on a villa taken over by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday morning.
“Nine pro-Iranian fighters, including a leader and a Syrian, were killed and more than 20 wounded in airstrikes targeting the villa they were staying in, which served as a communications center,” said the Britain-based war monitor, which did not yet know the origin of the strikes.
A later post from the rights group on X, formerly Twitter, updated the death toll to at least 30 people.
Media close to the Syrian government said the strikes were American.
The Observatory said that a few hours earlier, an Iranian cargo plane flew from Damascus to the eastern city of Deir Ezzor carrying technical equipment and soldiers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israel has for years carried out attacks on what it has described as 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, but rarely comments on them publicly.
Since the Iran-backed Hamas terror group’s brutal October 7 massacre, which saw some 1,200 people killed in Israel and 253 kidnapped, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed terror targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army air defenses and some Syrian forces.
The villa that was targeted and completely destroyed in the strike had been taken over by the Guards, who are responsible for Iran’s foreign operations.
The strikes were the first of their kind in eastern Syria since early February, the Observatory said.
Then, US strikes targeting the eastern cities of Deir Ezzor and Al-Madayeen killed 29 pro-Iran fighters in response to a deadly drone attack on a US base which killed three US soldiers just across the border in Jordan.
Source » timesofisrael.com
