More than a dozen people were killed in a series of airstrikes in eastern Syria last week, including an official from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a team member with the World Health Organization, the Associated Press reported.
The strikes in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour along the Iraqi border killed 15 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Among the dead were an Iranian military advisor and two of his bodyguards, nine fighters from an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia group, two Syrians working with the Iranians, and a Syrian engineer.
Iran’s state-run news agency confirmed that one of the dead was a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
The World Health Organization reported that the engineer, Emad Shehab, was one of its team members who headed up the WHO’s water, hygiene, and sanitation efforts in Deir el-Zour since 2022.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the airstrikes, Israel is known to launch strikes on Iranian-backed targets in the region while rarely acknowledging responsibility.
The Lebanese state-run National News Agency meanwhile reported that there had been an Israeli airstrike in the mountainous area of the Hermel region but did not say if there were casualties.
The IDF’s Arab-language spokesman Avichay Adraee confirmed that Israel launched an attack on a military complex in Zboud that was used by Hezbollah’s aerial unit, striking several buildings and an airstrip. He said the attack was retaliation for Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel’s air traffic control base at Mount Meron in northern Israel.
Hezbollah claimed it attacked the Mount Meron base in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in eastern Lebanon on March 24 that killed a Syrian.
Following the IDF attack on Zboud, Hezbollah said it fired over 50 rockets at an Israeli command center in the Golan Heights.
