Senior Iran officer killed

TEHRAN, June 23, (Agencies): Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Saturday that one of its senior officers had been killed in Syria while advising pro-government forces in an eastern town near the Iraqi border.

“Brigadier General Shahrokh Daipour ... was martyred in the town of Albu Kamal in Syria during a mission to advise Syrian pro-government forces,” according to the Guards’ Sepah News.

The brief report did not give the circumstances of the officer’s death.

He was described as a former unit commander who was wounded during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war before holding various positions involved with artillery.

Iran, along with Russia, is a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Tehran denies sending professional troops to fight in Iraq and Syria, saying it has only provided military advisors and organised brigades made up of volunteers from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Albu Kamal, in Deir Ezzor province, was the last major town in Syria held by the Islamic State group until its fall in November.

Its recapture by pro-government forces was the final nail in the coffin of the jihadists’ selfstyled “caliphate” declared across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

But a major assault by IS on Albu Kamal earlier this month that left dozens of pro-regime fighters dead underscored the continued threat posed by the jihadists.

Iraq said Saturday it had killed 45 jihadists from the Islamic State group, including senior members, in an air strike in eastern Syria, the second such operation in less than a month.

Iraqi F-16 fighter jets carried out a “successful strike targeting a meeting of DAESH (IS) leaders” on Friday in the Hajin region, in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, a military statement said.

Among those killed, it said, were a senior member of the jihadists’ “ministry of war”, his deputy, a local commander and a media official. There was no independent confirmation.

Three houses linked by an underground tunnel were also destroyed, it said, adding that the air strike was carried out based on “intelligence” and at the request of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Hajin, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Iraq’s border, is the largest populated hub still under IS control in Syria.

Last month the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that monitors the Syrian war said that at least 65 senior IS members live in Hajin.

The town has been surrounded since the end of last year by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, the monitor says.

Iraq’s air force has carried out several strikes on IS-held territory in Syria since April, including one targeting “the headquarters of IS terrorist gang leaders” in Hajin on May 24.

The following day Iraq released a video showing a strike on a huge building surrounded by palm trees and a wall which then collapsed.

Syrian regime forces on Saturday made their first gains on the ground against rebel fighters in the southern province of Daraa after several days of intensified bombardment, a monitor said.

Since Tuesday, regime troops have been ramping up shelling on opposition-held areas in Daraa’s eastern countryside ahead of an apparent military offensive against rebels there.

“Regime troops made their first advance in the area since the military escalation on Tuesday, seizing the villages of Al-Bustan and Al-Shumariya in the eastern part of Daraa province,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.