Air Raid Kills 9 People in Syria

Nine fighters were killed at an Iran-backed militia site in eastern Syria on Sunday in an air raid, according to a war monitor.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel was “likely responsible” for the strikes near the Iraqi border.

It was the second such attack in 24 hours, the Observatory said. It came hours after a similar raid killed six other Tehran-backed fighters, raising the total toll to 15 people killed in 24 hours, according to the monitor. The casualties in the second raid were mostly Iraqis, it said.

There was no official comment from Israel.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the commander of Iran’s elite Quds force visited eastern Syria in the past few days and accused the United States and Israel of conspiring to support the Islamic State terrorist group, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasni.

“Given that the existence of this group (Islamic State) is managed by the United States and the Zionist regime (Israel), we can be sure that the conspiracies of these two criminal regimes have not ended,” Tasnim quoted Esmail Qaani as saying in the Syrian town of Abu Kamal.