There were no immediate reports of who was responsible for the strikes, though defense analysts indicated that Israel was the likely actor.
The airstrikes occurred around 10 p.m. on Saturday, targeting three munitions storehouses in the Boulkamal region of Syria, near the Iraqi border, an area that has reportedly been hit by many Israeli raids in the past year.
Some news outlets in the country said that four fighters were killed in the strike, while others said five.
The Syrian Arab government did not immediately release an official tally.
The people killed were guards at the storehouses who were members of militias backed by Iran.
The strikes late Saturday targeted “positions of Iranian forces and allied militias” on the edge of the town of Albukamal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Five non-Syrian fighters were killed,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, without being able to provide their nationalities.
Regime troops, Iranian forces and allied Iran-backed fighters, including from Iraq, are present in the area on the western banks of the Euphrates River, he said.
According to the Observatory, 10 Iraqi fighters were killed in September in airstrikes of unknown origin in the same area.
At the start of that month, air raids killed 18 pro-Iran fighters, the monitor reported.
In June 2018, strikes near the Iraqi border killed 55 pro-regime forces, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, the Observatory said.
An American official said at the time that Israel was responsible, but the Jewish state declined to comment.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria on what it says are positions of Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which it has vowed to prevent gaining a foothold in Syrian territory.
But the US-led coalition that has been fighting the Islamic State group has in the past also admitted to carrying out airstrikes against pro-regime fighters.
The coalition is backing Kurdish-led fighters on the eastern shores of the Euphrates.
There were no immediate reports of who was responsible for the strikes, though defense analysts indicated that Israel was the likely actor.
The Israeli military as a rule does not comment on specific airstrikes in Syria, save for those that are in retaliation for attacks on Israel.
On Sunday, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel was taking action to force Iran’s military presence out of Syria.
“We are telling the Iranians: Syria will become your Vietnam,” he said, referring to the disastrous American war.
“If you don’t leave, you will become entrenched and you will bleed because we will work without hesitation to remove aggressive forces from Syria,” Bennett said.
The Saturday night strikes came days after reports of a similar raid in the same region.
Last Wednesday, unidentified aircraft bombed other Iranian-controlled weapons storehouses in Boulkamal, causing a massive explosion, according to Step News.
Israel has repeatedly said that it will not accept Iranian military entrenchment in Syria and that it will retaliate for any attack on the Jewish state from Syria.
Though it does not generally comment on specific attacks, Israel has admitted to carrying out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria against Iranian targets over the last several years.
Iran has forces based in Syria, Israel’s northern neighbor, and supports Hezbollah and Gaza terrorists.
AFP / Times of Israel
AFP / Times of Israel
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