Dozens of pro-regime fighters killed in Syria
AN AIRSTRIKE has killed nearly 40 pro-regime foreign fighters in eastern Syria, with a US-led coalition denying accusations from Damascus that it was behind the attack.
The strike just before midnight hit Al-Hari, a town controlled by regional militias fighting in the complex sevenyear war on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the conflict, said it was one of the deadliest air attacks on government loyalists in recent months.
“Thirty-eight non-Syrian fighters from regime loyalist militias were killed in the nighttime raid on Al-Hari, on the Syrian-Iraqi border,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
He could not give any further details on their nationalities, but there are Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese and even Afghan fighters stationed in the area.
Syrian state media reported the attack overnight, citing a military source and accusing the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State of carrying it out.
It said several people were killed and wounded but did not give a specific number or their nationalities.
The coalition’s press office said it had heard reports that a strike in the area had killed and wounded members of a proregime Iraqi militia, but denied it was responsible.
“There have been no strikes by US or coalition forces in that area,” it said by email.
IS overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, declaring an Islamic “caliphate” in areas under its control.
Separate offensives have since whittled down the jihadists’ territory in Syria to just a handful of pockets in the eastern desert, including in the Deir Ezzor province where Al-Hari lies.
A US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters and Russia-supported regime forces are carrying out separate operations against those IS-held pockets, and even Iraqi warplanes have occasionally bombed IS positions in Syria’s east.
The two forces have mostly avoided crashing into each other thanks to a de-confliction line that runs across the province along the winding Euphrates River.
Syrian troops are batting IS on the western river bank, while the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fight on the east.
Al-Hari lies on the western side, close to the river and the de-confliction line.
The buffer has largely been successful in keeping the two offensives apart, but there have been exceptions.