Iran fires missiles at Daesh posts in Syria

tehran — Iran fired missiles on Monday at Daesh militants in Syria it blamed for an attack in southwestern Iran on September 22, the Revolutionary Guards said, in what it called a sign of Tehran’s readiness to punish its enemies’ “wickedness”.

Monday’s strike targeted the bases of militants in eastern Syria, the Guards said in a statement on Sepah News, their official news site. It killed a number of militant leaders and destroyed their supplies and infrastructure, they said.

“Death to Israel” was written on one of the missiles shown on the Fars News site.

The strike targeted the last pocket of territory in southeastern Syria held by Daesh, said an official in the Iran-backed regional alliance fighting in support of President Bashar Al Assad.

It is an area where the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched a new offensive last month against Daesh. The US-led coalition confirmed Iranian forces had conducted “no notice strikes last night”. “At this time, the coalition is still assessing if any damage occurred and no coalition forces were in danger,” Col. spokesman Sean Ryan said.

Fars News posted video footage of several missiles streaking into a dark sky during the attack.

The six ballistic missiles used in the attack flew 570km to hit the targets, the Guards said.

A map shown on state TV pinpointed Kermanshah in western Iran as the launch site and Albu Kamal in southeast Syria as the target.

The missiles were Iranian-made Zolfaqar and Qiam missiles, Fars News reported.

“Our iron fist is prepared to deliver a decisive and crushing response to any wickedness and mischief of the enemies,” the Guards, the most powerful military force in the Islamic Republic, said in their statement.

Seven drones were also used to bomb militant targets during the attack, they said. The Ahvaz National Resistance, an Iranian ethnic

Arab separatist movement, and the Daesh have both claimed responsibility for the September 22 attack. Neither group has presented conclusive evidence to back up their claim.

Iranian support has been vital to helping Assad through the Syrian war, and Iran-backed forces are deployed in southeastern Syria on the west bank of the Euphrates River.

Iran has dismissed US demands that it leave Syria. The official in the Iran-backed alliance described strike, targeting an area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, as a

“limited message”. “One of the messages, to those it concerns, is that ‘our missiles are one of our powerful cards that are ready to respond whenever we want’,” he said.

Mohsen Rezaie, a former commander of the Guards, suggested in a Twitter message on Monday that more attacks were coming.

“The main punishment is on the way,” Rezaie, who is secretary of the Expediency Council, an unelected arbitration body that resolves disputes between parliament and a clerical body, the Guardian Council, wrote. —