Five Iran-backed fighters were killed on Sunday (August 11, 2024) in a drone strike in Syria’s east, near the Iraqi border, a war monitor said, adding it was not clear yet who was behind the attack.

“Five pro-Iranian fighters were killed and others were injured, some severely… after an unknown drone targeted the military vehicle they were in… near the Syrian-Iraqi border,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The strike occurred in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, where Iran wields significant influence and which is regularly targeted by Israel and the United States, according to the Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.

In June, three pro-Iran fighters, including at least two Iraqis, were killed in an overnight air strike in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, the Observatory had reported at the time.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria.

Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement have bolstered President Bashar al-Assad’s forces during Syria’s civil war.

The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered the conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and jihadists.

Washington:

A senior ISIS official was killed in a US airstrike in Syria on Sunday, the US Central Command said in a statement on Wednesday (local time). The senior ISIS official and facilitator have been identified as Usamah Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim al-Janabi.

The US Central Command said that his death would disrupt ISIS’s ability to conduct terror attacks.

In a statement shared on X, US Central Command stated, “US Central Command Airstrike in Syria Kills Senior ISIS Official On June 16, US Central Command conducted an airstrike in Syria, killing Usamah Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim al-Janabi, a senior ISIS official and facilitator.”

“His death will disrupt ISIS’s ability to resource and conduct terror attacks. CENTCOM, alongside allies and partners in the region, will continue to execute operations to degrade ISIS’s operational capabilities and ensure its enduring defeat. There is no indication any civilians were harmed in this strike,” it added.

The US military continues to target ISIS officials in Africa and the Middle East, CNN reported. Nearly three weeks back, an airstrike conducted in a remote area near Dhaardaar in Somalia was assessed to have killed three ISIS terrorists, CNN reported, citing US Africa Command.

From January to March, CENTCOM and its partners killed seven ISIS operatives and detained 27 others in Syria. During the same time period, 11 operatives were killed and 36 people were detained in Iraq, the report said.

Earlier in April, CENTCOM commander General Erik Kurilla said, “We are committed to the enduring defeat of ISIS because of the threat they pose both regionally and globally,” CNN reported.

General Kurilla further said, “We continue to focus our efforts on specifically targeting those members of ISIS who are seeking to conduct external operations outside of Iraq and Syria and those ISIS members attempting to break out ISIS members in detention in an attempt to reconstitute their forces.”

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Beirut:

Syria’s defence ministry said an Israeli air strike Wednesday killed a girl and wounded 10 civilians on the coast, as a war monitor reported another raid killed five pro-Hezbollah fighters.

“The Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Lebanon, targeting a central site and a residential building in Baniyas city in the coastal region, killing a girl and wounding 10 civilians,” a ministry statement said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor also reported the girl’s death and put the civilian wounded toll at 20.

The Britain-based Observatory also said the Israeli strike on central Syria killed three Syrian fighters working with Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group and two other non-Syrian fighters working for the same movement.

Earlier on Wednesday, state media said air defences intercepted Israeli “targets” over central Syria.

“Syrian air defence intercepts enemy targets in the skies of the city of Homs,” the official SANA news agency reported.

The Observatory said the Israeli strikes targeted “at least one military site… in the eastern countryside of Homs, causing plumes of smoke to rise”.

On Saturday, an Israeli drone strike in central Syria, near the border with Lebanon, killed two Hezbollah fighters, the Observatory had said.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in its northern neighbour, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.

The strikes have increased since Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, when the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group launched an unprecedented attack against Israel.

Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in 2011 after Damascus cracked down on anti-government protests.

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Washington:

The US military struck two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday.

“The precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17,” he said in a statement.

One US citizen contractor died from a cardiac incident during the attacks, and 21 US military personnel suffered “minor injuries, but all have since returned to duty,” Austin added. 

The strikes in Syria follow a direct warning earlier Thursday from President Joe Biden to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the strikes on US troops, the White House said on Thursday.

“There was a direct message relayed. That’s as far as I’m going to go,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, declining to say how it was delivered.

In his statement, Austin sought to distance the strikes against facilities used by the IRGC in Syria from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas members in Gaza.  

“These narrowly tailored strikes in self-defense were intended solely to protect and defend US personnel in Iraq and Syria,” he said. 

“They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict,” he added.

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Washington:

U.S. troops have been repeatedly attacked in Iraq and Syria in recent days, U.S. officials said on Thursday, as Washington is on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups with regional tensions soaring during the Israel-Hamas war.

President Joe Biden has sent naval power to the Middle East in the past two weeks, including two aircraft carriers, other warships and about 2,000 Marines.

There has been an uptick in attacks on U.S. forces since the conflict in Israel broke out on Oct. 7 when Palestinian militants from Hamas attacked southern Israel. On Wednesday, a drone hit U.S. forces in Syria resulting in minor injuries, while another one was brought down.

During a false alarm at Al Asad airbase in Iraq, a civilian contractor died from a cardiac arrest.

Earlier this week, U.S. forces thwarted multiple drones targeting troops in Iraq. On Thursday, drones and rockets targeted the Ain al-Asad air base, which hosts U.S. and other international forces in western Iraq, and multiple blasts were heard inside the base.

“While I’m not going to forecast any potential responses to these attacks, I will say that we will take all necessary actions to defend U.S. and coalition forces against any threat,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters on Thursday.

“Any response, should one occur, will come at a time in a manner of our choosing,” Ryder said.

A U.S. Navy warship traveling near Yemen on Thursday intercepted missiles and several drones that were launched by what Ryder said was the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, though it appeared that the projectiles were potentially heading in the direction of Israel.

LINK TO ISRAEL-HAMAS CONFLICT?

Israel has called up a record 360,000 reservists and has been bombarding the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip nonstop following Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, which killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

At least 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and 12,493 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza, the health ministry in Gaza said.

But Ryder said he did not see a link between the rise in attacks and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“At this point, again, the information that we have does not show a direct connection to the Hamas attacks on October 7,” he said.

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq, and 900 more in neighboring Syria, on a mission to advise and assist local forces in combating Islamic State, which in 2014 seized swathes of territory in both countries.

In Iraq, tension over the war in Gaza had already been high. Its top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, last week condemned Israel and called on the world to stand up to the “terrible brutality” in besieged Gaza.

Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful armed faction with close ties to Iran, accused the United States of supporting Israel in “killing innocent people” and said it should leave Iraq.

In past years, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq regularly targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad with rockets. Such attacks had abated under a truce in place since last year, and Iraq has had a period of relative calm.

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Beirut:

The Israeli government carried out a raid on a Syrian government position in the war-torn country’s south, a war monitoring NGO said on Wednesday.

“Sounds of explosions rang out in the province of Quneitra after an Israeli strike against a Syrian army position,” said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO, which has a vast network of sources in the country.

The sound of explosions also rang out in the Golan Heights, the NGO said, without specifying their source.

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Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes on Thursday hit the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service.

State news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that no one was hurt in the attacks.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

They would be the first Israeli strikes on Syria since the militant Palestinian group Hamas carried out its deadly attacks in southern Israel.

The airstrikes came a day before Iran’s foreign minister was scheduled to visit Syria to meet officials over the volatile situation in the region.

Israel has targeted airports and sea ports in the government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region joined Syria’s 12-year conflict helping tip the balance in favour of President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations. 

Palestinians carry a casualty on rubble in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 11, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel bombed Gaza overnight ahead of a potential ground assault against Hamas while U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the Palestinian militant group’s surprise attack as “sheer evil” and issued a warning seemingly aimed at its Iranian backers.

Israel’s death toll reached 1,200 with more than 2,700 wounded, its military said, from Hamas militants’ hours-long rampage after breaching the border fence around Gaza on Saturday.

The group’s armed wing, al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday, as Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles assembled in large numbers just north of Gaza. and Hamas’ armed wing.

Israel-Hamas war, day 5, LIVE updates | Netanyahu, opposition agree on unity government and war cabinet

Retaliatory strikes on the blockaded enclave have killed 1,055 people and wounded 5,184, Palestinian officials say.

The Israeli military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that it said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.

“Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers near the fence on Tuesday. “We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground.”

Israel said it was shifting all schools to remote learning from Sunday and stepping up issuing firearms to licensed citizens, predicting possible friction between its majority Jews and Arab minority amid calls for more protests in support of Gaza’s Palestinians.

In another sign of the crisis widening, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns after a rocket attack by the powerful armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. It was the fourth consecutive day of violence there and followed shelling from Syria on Tuesday that Israel said it was investigating.

Jerusalem:

Israel’s military on Tuesday said it had responded with artillery fire from the Golan Heights after munitions were launched toward territory it has occupied since 1967.

“Soldiers are responding with artillery and mortar shells toward the origin of the launching in Syria,” an Israeli military statement said, on the fourth day of a war with Gaza-based Hamas militants that has sent regional tensions soaring.

The military said there had been “a number of launches from Syria into Israeli territory”.

A military spokesman told AFP it appeared to have been mortar fire.

This was the first exchange of fire between Israel and Syria since Hamas carried out an unprecedented assault on Israeli territory from the blockaded Gaza Strip on Saturday.

Fears of another front opening in the conflict have grown after days of clashes with militants on the northern border with Lebanon.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based NGO with an extensive network of sources in Syria, the shells were fired by “Palestinian factions working with the Lebanese Hezbollah”.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967. Its 1981 annexation of the strategic area is not recognised by the United Nations.

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Turkish attacks in Kurdish-held northeast Syria killed 29 Kurdish security personnel and wounded 28 at an academy for the forces, authorities in the semi-autonomous area said on October 9.

Turkey has been bombing sites in the area since October 5, hitting civilian and military targets and infrastructure and causing casualties, according to Kurdish authorities.

An academy for the Kurds’ anti-drug forces was among several targets overnight, the Kurdish authorities said in a statement, adding that “29 members of the anti-drug forces were killed and 28 others were wounded”, some of them critically.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, reported that 30 members of the Kurdish internal security forces, known as the Asayish, were killed and 37 others wounded after a Turkish war plane targeted a training centre on the outskirts of Al-Malikiyah at midnight.

AFP correspondents said that authorities in the area have called for blood donations, while witnesses said that hospitals were full of casualties.

Amid the chaos of Syria’s long-running civil conflict, Syria’s Kurds have carved out a semi-autonomous area in the country’s northeast.

Turkey’s Defence Ministry said on October 6 it launched a new wave of air strikes in retaliation for an attack in Ankara earlier this month that wounded two security personnel.

A branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies — claimed responsibility for the first bombing to hit the Turkish capital since 2016.

Turkey launched strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq hours after the October 1 attack, with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan saying days later that the assailants “came from Syria and were trained there”.

Kurdish denial

The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle to dislodge Islamic State group fighters from their last scraps of territory in Syria in 2019.

Turkey views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that dominate the SDF as an offshoot of the PKK.

The SDF, the Kurds’ de facto army in the northeast, denied that those behind the Ankara attack had passed through the area.

Turkish bombings had largely subsided over the weekend after strikes hit energy infrastructure, including power stations and oil facilities on October 5 and October 6, killing at least 15 security personnel and civilians, according to the Kurdish authorities.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened a new incursion.

Turkey supported early rebel efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and maintains a military presence in northern stretches of the war-torn country which angers Damascus.

In November last year, Turkey launched air strikes on Kurdish-held areas of Syria and Iraq in response to a bombing in Istanbul that killed six people.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than half a million people since it began in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, spiralling into a devastating war involving foreign armies, militias and jihadists.