Saudi Arabian fighter jets participated in a recent operation targeting Iranian militia positions in the eastern Syrian city of Albu Kamal across from the Iraqi border, according to a report by Independent Arabia citing a western source.
The source told the Saudi-funded news outlet that the operations resulted in the killing and wounding of several militants as well as the destruction of several weapons depots, including missiles and drones.
According to Al Arabiya news channel, the Saudi fighter jets, including jets [from other countries] monitored changes in the positions of Iranian militias, especially those of the Quds Force in Albu Kamal and other areas in the Iraqi-Syrian border, destroying warehouses, batteries, missiles and a drone base all believed were about to be used by Iran to strike other Saudi targets after targeting Aramco.,” the western source, who declined to be named, said.
The death toll of Iran-backed militnats hit by suspected the Saudi airstrikes reached 17, local activists said Wednesday.
Tuesday's overnight strikes targeted "three positions of the (Iranian) Revolutionary Guards and allied (Iraqi) militias" in Albu Kamal, in the Euphrates Valley just across the border from Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"Ten Iraqis from pro-Iranian militias were killed," the Britain-based monitor said.
A day earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said overnight airstrikes killed 10 pro-Iranian Iraqi militiamen in Albu Kamal without specifying who carried them out.
The report noted that the strike was the second of its kind to target Iranian and pro-Iran militias in the city this month.
The strikes came as tensions mounted between arch-foes Iran and the United States after Washington blamed Tehran for weekend attacks on Saudi oil installations.
They were the second to hit pro-Iranian forces in eastern Syria in little more than a week.
On September 9, air strikes killed 18 fighters, including Iranians, according to the Observatory.
Those strikes were blamed on Israel by a media outlet run by Iran's Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Neither Israel nor the Syrian regime made any comment.
In June last year, strikes near the Iraqi border killed 55 fighters, most of them Syrian or Iraqi. A US official speaking on condition of anonymity said Israel was responsible.
Much of the east of Syria was held by jihadists of the Islamic State group before their defeat in March.
It is now divided by the Euphrates Valley into a zone held by forces loyal to the Syrian government and its ally Iran and another held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their allies in a US-led coalition, which has in the past carried out air raids on pro-regime forces.
The eight-year-old war has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and forced 13 million people from their homes, half of whom have left their shattered homeland.
Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies
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