BAGHDAD: Late night airstrikes in eastern Syria along the border with Iraq targeted Iran-backed militiamen, inflicting casualties, Syrian opposition activists said Wednesday. According to two paramilitary officers in Iraq, some of those killed in the attack were Iranian nationals.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the strikes. The US military has carried out such strikes in the past.
The attack, shortly before midnight Tuesday, hit tanker trucks carrying fuel and other trucks carrying weapons for the militias in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor. It added that at least 14 people, most of them militiamen, were killed in the strike.
The Deir Ezzor 24, an activist collective, reported three airstrikes targeting Iran-backed militias in the Syrian border town of Boukamal and nearby areas. It had no immediate word on casualties.
Earlier, members of Iraqi paramilitary groups operating in the area said an airstrike on a convoy carrying fuel across the Iraqi border into Syria killed at least 10 people late Tuesday. The strike hit a convoy of about 15 trucks that had crossed into Syria near the town of Al-Qaim, two paramilitary officers told The Associated Press.
It was unclear where the convoy was coming from, but the officers said some of those killed were Iranian nationals. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strikes with reporters.
Iranian state television’s English-language service, Press TV, early on Wednesday cited unnamed sources claiming there was an attack on a fuel truck convoy crossing from Iraq into Syria at the Al-Qaim border crossing.
Press TV claimed the convoy was carrying Iranian oil to Lebanon through Syria. Iranian officials offered no casualty details.
Iran’s state TV claimed the convoy attack was warried out by US drones and helicopters. It said the convoy included 22 tanker trucks, adding that the attack took place after eight of the trucks crossed into Syria.
Iran is a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has sent thousands of Iran-backed fighters to help Syrian troops during the country’s 11-year civil war. Both Tehran and Assad’s government are also allied with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has fought alongside Assad’s forces in the war.
In August, the US military carried out airstrikes in Deir Ezzor targeting Iran-backed militiamen. The Pentagon said the strikes were a message to Iran and Tehran-backed militias that targeted American troops earlier that month and several other times over the past year.
At the time, the Observatory and Deir Ezzor 24 said the US airstrikes targeted the Ayash Camp, run by the Fatimiyoun group made up of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan. The Observatory reported that at least six Syrian and foreign militants were killed, while Deir Ezzor 24 reported 10 deaths.
Strikes in Syria hit fuel convoy from Iraq; Iranians killed
https://arab.news/2z8st
Strikes in Syria hit fuel convoy from Iraq; Iranians killed
- It was not immediately clear who was behind the strikes
- At least 14 people, most of them militiamen, were killed in the strike
Video shows armed men beating a Palestinian in West Bank
- The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said
TEL AVIV: Dozens of masked men armed with sticks beat and injured a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when they attacked a plant nursery, according to people who saw the attack and video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
Video filmed by security cameras shows men dressed mostly in black, faces covered, with several hitting and kicking a man on the ground.
Two witnesses who are members of the family that owns the facility said Israeli settlers beat 67-year-old Basim Saleh Yassin as he was trying to flee the German-Palestinian-run nursery in the northern West Bank village of Deir Sharaf. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
BACKGROUND
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Workers fled when they saw the settlers coming on Thursday but Yassin is deaf and couldn’t hear the warnings to leave, one family member said.
The witnesses said Yassin was in the hospital with broken bones in his hand and other injuries to his face, chest and back. Four cars at the nursery were burned.
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Israeli authorities have done little beyond issuing occasional condemnations of the violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the perpetrators “a handful of extremists” and urged law enforcement to pursue them for “the attempt to take the law into their own hands.”
But rights groups and Palestinians say the problem is far greater than a few bad actors, and attacks have become a daily phenomenon across the territory.
Israel’s army said it dispatched soldiers to the Shavei Shomron junction — close to the area of Thursday’s attack — following reports of dozens of masked Israelis vandalizing property.
The army said it apprehended three suspects who were taken to police for questioning. It said security forces condemn violence of any kind.
According to one of the family members who own the nursery, it was the third time in a year that the facility was attacked.
The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said.
In the video of Thursday’s attack, Yassin runs from a group of masked people before falling to the ground.
One man kicks him and another hits him twice with what appears to be a stick. Yassin stays on his knees as he’s struck again and then places his hands on the ground.
As the men are leaving, one kicks him in the head while others strike him again until he’s seen lying on the pavement.
