According to a war monitor and Syrian state media, at least 15 people were killed in air strikes in eastern Syria on Tuesday, including an Iranian military adviser and a team member working for the UN's World Health Organization.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the air strikes on Tuesday.
Syria Air Strikes Kill 15 People
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor connected to Syria's opposition, at least 15 people, including an adviser with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two of his bodyguards, nine Iraqi fighters from an Iran-backed group, and two Syrians working with the Iranians, were reported to have died.
Syrian state media said one civilian and at least seven soldiers, including an IRGC member, were killed. The strikes, which targeted residential areas and military sites in the province of Deir ez-Zor and damaged both public and private property, also left at least 19 other troops and 13 civilians wounded.
The WHO claimed that Emad Shehab, an engineer in the provincial capital, also named Deir ez-Zor, was killed after his building was struck by one of several airstrikes that occurred in the area.
It stated that Shehab was the WHO representative for the Syrian city's water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Hanan Balkhy, WHO's regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, said in a statement that Shehab's untimely passing marks not only a great loss for his loved ones but is a reminder of the continuous violence and suffering of the people of Syria.
"My colleagues and I are heartbroken at the tragic loss of another one of our own in an airstrike in #Syria this morning," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Israel sometimes attacks Iran-linked targets in Syria but rarely acknowledges them. Meanwhile, the US claimed it was not behind the assaults that occurred overnight.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington that they did not carry out air strikes in Syria last night.
According to Iran's official news agency IRNA, referring to Israel, the strike was carried out by the Zionist regime.
Behrouz Vahedi, a military adviser who was killed, was named by IRNA as a member of the Quds force, the foreign operations arm of the IRGC.
The Observatory said that the strikes were the first of their kind in eastern Syria since early February.
Hammoud al-Jabbour told AFP he woke up to explosions. He said it was one of the biggest strikes he had heard, and the windows of his house were shattered. The power was cut in several neighborhoods, and the main roads were closed.
IDF Strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon
On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said that they had launched airstrikes on Hezbollah sites deep in Lebanon. The terror group had earlier attacked a border town winery and a crucial air traffic control center in northern Israel, suffering damage in the latter attack.
The Israeli airstrike near the village of Zboud in the northeast, which is located around 110 kilometers away from Israel's border, was the most extensive attack in Lebanon during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
According to the IDF, the operation targeted a military compound used by Hezbollah's aerial unit near Zboud in the Baalbek District in retaliation for Hezbollah's earlier-day attack on the Mount Meron air traffic control base.
The IDF claimed that the compound included several buildings and a landing pad for drones. It is also said to have hit an observation station in Maroun al-Ras, as well as a building and other infrastructure used by Hezbollah in the southern Lebanon towns of Ayta ash-Shab and Kafr Kila.
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