Six Iran-backed terrorist killed in strikes over Syria-Iraq border

Airstrikes killed at least six Iran-backed terrorists at the Syria-Iraq border, two members of Iraqi militia groups told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Hours before the Associated Press report, the Hezbollah terrorist organization announced that four operatives within their ranks were killed by Israeli attacks around the same time, according to Walla, which states that they were among the six that were killed in eastern Syria. The other two were reportedly Syrian fighters, the Iraqi militia members said.

Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas War, more than 160 Hezbollah members have been killed. 

Arab media also reported that airstrikes were carried out against sites identified with pro-Iranian militias in the Boukamal region of Syria near the Iraq border. Some of the reports, such as the Lebanese source Al-Mayadeen, state that the airstrikes have been attributed to Israel.

Further insight into the strikes' target

The attacks hit a weapons depot, a militants’ convoy that had arrived from Iraq to Syria, and a training complex belonging to the pro-Iranian militia, according to The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, which states that the number killed at the border is actually nine, saying that three of them were Syrian nationals, and said that that strike was done by US forces. The organization also said that the "death toll is likely to increase due to the presence of more than 27 injured members of the militias."

The Press report stated that the attack on the border came hours after an "umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militants — known as the Islamic Resistance — claimed an attack on a US military base in the city of Irbil in northern Iraq." The militant group has conducted attacks on over 100 US positions in Iraq and eastern Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

These reports come only days after Iran announced that Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was responsible for coordinating between the IRGC and Syria, was killed in an Israeli attack in Damascus.