This morning’s US attack on alleged pro-Iranian militias in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al Zur targeted an “uninhabited” area and caused a death toll among the Arab army, a source told Efe.
The source, who requested anonymity, said the projectiles fired by US aircraft hit “an uninhabited area near a position belonging to one of the Iranian forces operating in the Abu Kamal region.” Deir al Zur, on the border with Iraq.
He also said that a Syrian soldier had been killed and three “Iranian fighters” were injured in the action, although the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had previously said there were 22 dead in Iraqi militias backed by Iran’s Popular Crowd and Kataib Hezbollah.
The news channels of Kataib Hezbollah, a militia integrated in the Iraqi pro-government group Popular Crowd, confirmed the death of one of its fighters “in the US air attack”.
According to the Observatory, based in the United Kingdom and a wide network of collaborators on the ground, the bombing, the first since Joe Biden’s arrival in the US presidency, targeted the positions of these groups and an arms shipment that ended to cross the border into Iraq. .
The Pentagon, for its part, explained that this action is a response to recent attacks on US troops and the international coalition fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq, as well as “continuing threats” against these personnel.
Ten days ago, an American soldier was injured and an entrepreneur was killed in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, after the impact of several projectiles, three of them at the airport in the capital.
Attacks on US facilities in Iraq have escalated since the US killed powerful Iranian commander Qasem Soleimanà in a bombing aimed at Baghdad in January 2020, an action widely criticized by Iraqi political forces and the country’s pro-Iranian militias.