"19 Iranian-backed militiamen killed in Israeli attack on eastern Syria"
A group monitoring developments in Syria announced on Thursday, December 26, that at least 19 Iranian-backed militants were killed in a possible Israeli airstrike on targets in Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which publishes information on the Syrian war, said that positions of Iranian-backed Shiite militias outside Albukamal in Deir Ezzor province were targeted by Israeli airstrikes on Thursday morning, with most of the casualties being Pakistani Shiite militias.
According to the report, Syrian state media did not report any news about the airstrikes on Thursday morning, and Israel rarely claims responsibility for them.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that at least eight members of pro-Iranian forces were killed in an airstrike by Israeli warplanes on positions near Damascus early Wednesday. The group said the targets of last night's attacks were a weapons depot and a position of Iranian forces and their Lebanese allies from Hezbollah, but the nationalities of the killed individuals were not yet known.
It was also reported that "14 members of the Iranian-allied forces" were killed in Israeli warplanes' attacks on the Albukamal border area in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq, on Saturday night.
Meanwhile, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, on Tuesday called on the UN Security Council to take immediate action to expel Iranian military forces in Syria.
Gilad Erdan emphasized in a letter to the President of the Security Council: Israel... demands the complete withdrawal of Iran and its proxy groups from Syria and the dismantling of the Iranian military infrastructure on Syrian soil.
This was while the Israeli army, in an unprecedented move, officially and quickly accepted responsibility for the attack on the morning of November 19 against the headquarters of the 7th Division of the Syrian Army, with the justification that the "Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps" had been active there.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said that day that their country's airstrikes against Iran and Syria were carried out with the "message" that bombing on the Syrian-Israeli border "will not be tolerated."
The war in Syria has killed more than 380,000 people since 2011 and displaced millions from their homes, according to AFP.
Source: Radio Farda
