BEIRUT: Seven people, including several civilians, were killed on Wednesday when a drone strike targeted a weapons factory belonging to Iran-backed factions in government-held eastern Syria, said a UK-based rights group.

It is not clear who was behind the strike in Deir Ezzor province, where a US-led coalition and Israel have previously carried out attacks. Only a day ago, Israeli warplanes stuck Syria’s Aleppo airport, causing significant damage that halted flights to and from Syria’s quake-battered city.

Seven people were killed and 15 wounded in a drone strike targeting a “weapons factory and a truck loaded with weapons”, both belonging to Iran-backed groups, claimed Rami Abdel Rahman, heading the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Three Afghans, three Syrian civilians and one unidentified Syrian national were killed, he said, claiming that the building targeted was only recently converted into an arms factory.

Israel has carried out repeated air and missile strikes against government forces and their allies in Syria since 2011, but it rarely comments on individual military operations.

Wednesday’s attack targeted a part of Deir Ezzor that is home to residences of top Iranian commanders and senior officers of Lebanon’s Hezbollah move­ment and an Iranian hospital for cholera pati­ents, Abdel Rahman said.

Syrian state media said a landmine planted by “terrorists” of the militant IS group exploded in the neighbourhood.

“Three citizens were killed and seven others injured” in the explosion, state news agency SANA reported. It also published photos of the site after the blast.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2023