Unidentified warplanes bombed vital positions of militias supported by Iran in various areas of Deir Ezzor province, eastern Syria, without information on the extent of damage resulting from the strikes.
Enab Baladi’s correspondent in Deir Ezzor reported that warplanes bombed scattered locations in Deir Ezzor province in the early hours of Tuesday, March 26, focusing on the cities of al-Bukamal, al-Mayadeen, and Deir Ezzor.
The raids targeted vital sites used by the Iranian militias in the villages of al-Suway’iyyah and al-Salihiyah, and a building near the presidency of the Euphrates University used by the militias as their headquarters, in addition to bombing targeting sites in the Villas neighborhood in the center of Deir Ezzor.
The Deir Ezzor 24 website, specialized in covering news of the province, posted a video recording on Facebook, claiming it to be from the aftermath of a “US raid” that targeted a building used by the Iranian militias near the university presidency building in Deir Ezzor city.
The local website added that one of the raids in the village of al-Sukariyah west of the city of al-Bukamal, eastern Deir Ezzor, resulted in the serious injury of the prominent leader in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) known as “al-Haj Askar,” who was transported to the hospital following the injury.
Al-Haj Askar leads the Iranian militias in al-Bukamal and its surroundings and is of Iranian nationality, reporting to another Iranian leader known as “al-Haj Mahdi,” who is an Iranian military commander responsible for all its militias in Deir Ezzor.
The city of al-Bukamal is considered one of the strongholds of Iranian militias in eastern Syria, due to its proximity to the Iraqi border, and its geographical supervision over the al-Qaim crossing that connects Syria with Iraq and is considered an Iranian passageway to Lebanon via Iraq and Syria.
While the Syrian regime has not commented on the bombing up to the moment of editing this news, the local Sham FM radio stated that a “US aggression” targeted a number of points in the cities of Deir Ezzor, al-Mayadeen, and al-Bukamal.
For its part, the Al-Mayadeen TV channel (based in Beirut and close to Tehran) said that American aviation targeted the al-Salihiyah area in al-Bukamal and the residential neighborhoods in al-Mayadeen and al-Qusur neighborhood in Deir Ezzor, leaving dead and wounded people, whose number was not specified.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (based in London) stated that seven elements of the Iranian militias were killed, in a preliminary toll, as a result of the air strikes, indicating information about the killing of a leadership figure in the Villas neighborhood of the city.
Similar targeting has been repeated in the eastern Deir Ezzor province near the Syrian-Iraqi border, as the area is considered an Iranian passageway that sometimes witnesses intense operations of smuggling and arms transfer, and its intensity decreases at other times.
The Iranian passageway is active with smuggling operations of weapons to Syria and Lebanon, and the smuggling of infrastructure for the production and assembly of advanced conventional weapons on Syrian territory, according to a detailed report prepared by the Israeli Alma Research and Education Center regarding the border crossing with Iraq, considering that the Iranian “precision missile project” is an example of such mechanisms.
On February 3, the US Air Force carried out airstrikes targeting positions of the Iranian militias and the Syrian regime forces in the province of Deir Ezzor and its countryside, concurrently with raids that targeted militia positions in Iraq.
The strikes at that time targeted more than 85 objectives belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its militias in Syria and Iraq, according to the US Department of Defense, in response to drone attacks that targeted US forces near the Syrian-Jordanian border recently, which resulted in the death of three American soldiers.