BEIRUT: A family of three was killed late Saturday in a wave of regime shelling on a southern district of Syria’s capital held by Daesh, a monitor said.
Syrian troops are waging an intense bombing campaign against Yarmuk, a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, and nearby districts that are held by Daesh.
A woman, her husband, and their child were killed in the Yarmuk shelling, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.
“This brings to nine the number of civilians killed since the shelling escalated on Thursday,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
The bombing and clashes continued into Sunday, Abdel Rahman said, with air strikes, artillery, and surface-to-surface missiles hitting the neighborhood.
Yarmuk was once a densely-populated and thriving district of the capital, but it has been ravaged by violence since Syria’s conflict broke out in 2011.
Syria’s government imposed a crippling siege on it in 2012, and fighting among rebels and rival extremists has exhausted residents.
In 2015, Daesh overran most of Yarmuk, and the small numbers of other rebels and extremists, including from Al-Qaeda’s former affiliate, that had a presence there agreed to withdraw just a few weeks ago.
Simultaneously, the Syrian army was finishing off the last rebel pockets in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus that had been the opposition’s main bastion near the capital.
Securing Ghouta has allowed the regime to refocus on Yarmuk, but the escalating shelling has sparked worries among humanitarian organizations.
The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said it was “deeply concerned about the fate of civilians” and thousands of refugees in and around the camp.
Family dead in Syria regime shelling on Daesh-held district
Family dead in Syria regime shelling on Daesh-held district
Strikes blamed on US kills five Iran-backed fighters in Iraq
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said early Tuesday that they had targeted a US base in the region
BAGHDAD: Five Iran-backed fighters in Iraq were killed on Tuesday in strikes their groups blamed on the United States.
The Kataeb Imam Ali group said four fighters were killed in an “American aggression” at dawn against one of their positions in the Debs district of Kirkuk province in northern Iraq.
Late Tuesday, another strike killed a fighter from the Kataeb Hezbollah group in Al-Qaem area near the Iraqi-Syrian border, a source from the group told AFP.
The bombings targeted positions occupied by the Hashed Al-Shaabi, an alliance of factions integrated into Iraq’s regular army.
It also encompasses Iran-backed fighters, including the Kataeb Imam Ali and Kataeb Hezbollah groups.
Since the start of the Middle East war, bases belonging to Hashed Al-Shaabi, or the Popular Mobilization Forces, have been hit several times.
Iraq, long a proxy battleground between the United States and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the war, but it has not been spared.
Iran-backed groups have claimed attacks on US bases in Iraq and in the region, without specifying their targets.
At least five drones targeted on Tuesday a military base at the Baghdad International Airport, which houses a US diplomatic facility, a security source said.
One drone crashed near Iraq’s anti-terrorism forces and another ignited a fire at a depot, with no casualties reported, according to the source.
The autonomous Kurdistan region in the north, hosts US troops and has been a main target of drone attacks, but these have largely been intercepted.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said early Tuesday that they had targeted a US base in the region.
At night, the US-led coalition air defenses downed a drone that crashed between the US consulate in Kurdistan capital Irbil and the airport, which houses US and foreign troops, a Kurdish security source said.
On Monday, a drone was downed near the UAE consulate in the city.
