Suspected Israeli strike on Syria kills atleast 8 Iranians

Damascus: At least eight Iranians were among 15 foreign pro-regime fighters killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Syria on a weapons depot of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, a war monitor said Wednesday.

The reported attack came an hour after US President Donald Trump announced that the United States withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, calling Tehran a main exporter of terrorism in the region.

The raid struck the area of Kisweh south of Damascus late Tuesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Syria’s official news agency SANA said the army had intercepted two Israeli missiles fired towards Kisweh, with state television broadcasting images of fires in the nearby area.

The monitor previously reported nine pro-regime combatants had died in the raid, without specifying their nationality.

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SANA quoted a medical source saying that two civilians had died on a highway linking Damascus with the southern city of Deraa as a result of an explosion linked to “the Israeli aggression”.

Late Tuesday, the Israeli-occupied section of the Golan Heights was placed on high alert due to “irregular activity by Iranian forces” across the demarcation line in Syria.

It is not the first time that Kisweh has been targeted. In December, Israel reportedly bombed military positions in the area south of Damascus, including a weapons depot.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has repeatedly targeted positions of the Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement backing it inside the country.

On April 29, missile strikes — “probably Israeli” — fired on regime military positions killed at least 26 mostly Iranian fighters, according to the Observatory.

AFP inputs