One killed, 7 wounded in coalition strike in Syria
BEIRUT: At least one Syrian soldier was killed and seven others wounded in a US-led coalition strike in central Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based monitor said the bombing raid targeted a Syrian government position in a desert area in the central province of Homs.
“There was a vehicle moving around that gathering point, which lies just 20 kilometres away from al-Tanf,” the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
“The vehicle and the position were both targeted,” he told AFP.
One Syrian soldier was killed and another seven were wounded, according to Abdel Rahman.
Al-Tanf is a garrison located along Syria’s southeastern border with Jordan and is used by US-led coalition forces to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State group.
But there are Syrian government troops and allied fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon positioned near the zone.
To keep them from interfering with the anti-IS efforts, the coalition has agreed with regime ally Russia to a 55-kilometre de-confliction zone around alTanf.
The US has carried out raids against regime forces and its allies if it found they were getting too close to the zone.
On Thursday, the Pentagon told AFP there was a brief clash but denied it had carried out a strike and said there were no casualties. — AFP