Representational Image. AFP
Beirut: A convoy of trucks moving weapons into eastern Syria from Iraq was destroyed by airstrikes, killing seven individuals, a war monitor reported on Monday.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the seven were “truck drivers and their aides, all of them not Syrians,” and they were “killed as a result of unidentified aircraft hitting a convoy of Iran-backed militants, last night.”
According to the Observatory, which has a vast network of sources inside Syria, the strikes destroyed a convoy of six refrigerated trucks carrying Iranian weaponry in the Albu Kamal border region.
Israel has launched several air and missile strikes against Iranian-backed and government forces in Syria, where the US military is also present, despite no country claiming responsibility for the strikes.
Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, had told AFP on Sunday that “the trucks were carrying Iranian weapons.”
Tehran aids Damascus militarily in the civil conflict in Syria, notably by supporting armed groups.
An activist named Omar Abu Layla, who runs the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet, told AFP on Monday that the attacks targeted a convoy of trucks as well as the regional headquarters of organisations supported by Iran.
The area that was affected “suffered considerable damage,” he said.
Six refrigerated trucks were “targeted, in a number of strikes, by unidentified combat jets,” according to a pro-Syrian government radio station’s claim on Sunday.
At least two identical convoys, according to the Observatory, entered Syria from Iraq this week and delivered their cargo to organisations that support Iran in the eastern town of Al-Mayadeen.
Pro-Iranian militias, including the potent Hezbollah organisation from Lebanon, are strongly stationed in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor and along the Iraq-Syria border.
Al-Mayadeen and Albu Kamal are both in Deir Ezzor, and Albu Kamal has experienced similar attacks in the past.
Although an Iraqi border guard officer reportedly told media that there were no casualties, the Observatoryreported in November that a strike in the region struck a convoy of pro-Iran militiamen carrying “fuel tanks and vehicles filled with weapons,” killing at least 14.
Aviv Kohavi, the head of Israel’s military, claimed responsibility for the raid in December and added that the convoy was moving weaponry to Lebanon, where Hezbollah plays a significant role.
Strikes against pro-Iran fighters in Syria have already been conducted by a coalition led by the US that is battling the Daesh group’s remnants in both Iraq and Syria.
Israel has also acknowledged conducting several airstrikes and missile attacks within the nation since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
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