A war monitoring group said Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes on eastern Syria killed 57 regime forces and allies backed by Iran in the deadliest attacks since the start of the conflict.
The overnight raids on weapons depots and military positions have killed at least 14 Syrian regime forces, 16 Iraqi military fighters and 11 Afghan members of the Fatimid Brigade pro-Iran, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The nationality of the remaining 16 people who lost their lives in the 18 strikes was not immediately clear.
“This is the largest death toll due to Israeli attacks in Syria,” said the head of the Syrian Observatory, Rami Abdul Rahman.
The official Syrian news agency Sana said ‘the Israeli enemy carried out an air strike on the city of Deir Ezzor and the Albu Kamal region’, adding that ‘the results of the aggression are currently being confirmed’.
An Israeli army spokesman declined to comment.
A few days before the strikes, the Fatimid Brigade transported a consignment of weapons manufactured by Iran to eastern Syria from neighboring Iraq, the UK Observatory said, relying on a network of resources. They were stored overnight in the targeted area.
It is less than a week since the last wave of Israeli strikes in Syria. On Thursday, Israel targeted positions in the southern and southern suburbs of Damascus, killing three pro-Iran fighters.
Israel regularly conducts raids in Syria, mostly against targets related to Iran, which they say is an attempt to prevent its arch-enemy from consolidating a foothold on its northern border.
Observers have warned that in the last days of the US president’s term, Donald Trump and Israel could increase opposition to Iran and its allies.
The Trump administration, which is set to replace Joe Biden’s on January 20, has provided unprecedented US support to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In the days of the Trump administration’s death, Netanyahu is trying to do as much damage as possible to the IRGC effort in Syria before Biden takes office,” said Nicholas Heras, of the Institute of the Study of War, referring to Iran’s Islamic revolutionary . Waiting Corps.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air and missile attacks on Syria since the civil war in 2011, targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as Syrian government troops.
Israel rarely acknowledges individual strikes, but did so when responding to what it describes as aggression within Israeli territory.
It hit about 50 targets in Syria in 2020, according to an annual report released by its military.
The latest raids came hours after separate strikes near the Iraqi border on Tuesday killed at least 12 Iranian-backed military fighters. The Observatory said it could not identify the warplanes responsible for the earlier strikes.
The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions of people since it erupted after the brutal repression of protests against the government.