BEIRUT: Strikes in Syria on Tuesday killed 16 ‘pro-Iran fighters’ including an Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a war monitor said, while the World Health Organisation also reported one of its workers was killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights did not say who carried out the air strikes in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which has been targeted by both US and Israeli raids in the past.

A US defence official said the United States “did not conduct any airstrikes” overnight.

The observatory said “an Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser, his two Iranian security escorts, two Syrian fighters” and five other combatants belonging to pro-Iran groups were killed in a villa in Deir Ezzor city.

It said the villa “served as a communications centre” in the area, reporting that the building was destroyed and that a Syrian civilian was also killed.

News agency blames ‘American occupation forces’ for the attack

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later announced on social media “the tragic loss of another one of our own in an airstrike in Syria this morning”.

It identified him as Emad Shehab, an engineer who it said “served as the WHO water and sanitation focal point” in Deir Ezzor.

Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported the attack was “carried out by the Zionist regime”, its term for Israel.

It identified the dead guard as Behrouz Vahedi, saying he belonged to the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Four other fighters were killed in a separate strike in the town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, said the Britain-based observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria. It said in total nine of the dead in the strikes were Iraqi nationals.

Syrian state news agency SANA blamed “American occupation forces” for the attack, which it said killed “seven military personnel and one civilian”, wounded others and caused “great material losses to public and private property”.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes targeting pro-Iran groups fighting alongside the forces of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s 13-year civil war.

The US has carried out fewer strikes in eastern Syria against pro-Iran groups, which it blames for a flurry of attacks on US interests in Iraq and Syria during the Israeli aggression in Gaza.

Hammoud al-Jabbour, who lives a short walk from the villa, said he was woken up by the sound of explosions. “It was one of the biggest strikes I’ve heard,” he said.

“The windows of my house were shattered, the power was cut in several neighbourhoods and the main roads were closed.” The observatory said an Iranian cargo plane flew from Damascus to Deir Ezzor city shortly before the strike, carrying technical equipment and the guards adviser.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2024