Israel has launched several airstrikes on eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, killing at least eight fighters of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a key player in the fight against Daesh and other terrorist groups in the region.
The air raids struck trucks and weapons depots in Albu Kamal in eastern Syria early Friday, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The group said “unidentified aircraft” targeted the area, but Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen news outlet said Israel was responsible for the strikes.
SOHR chief Rami Abdurrahman said the airstrikes killed at least eight forces of the PMF, better known by their name Hashd al-Sha’abi, and wounded several others.
The Israeli regime has a long record for attacking forces fighting Daesh terrorists in Syria. The recent air raids were the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted positions of the Hashd al-Sha’abi forces across the region over the past months.
Last August, Israeli aircraft killed and wounded several PMF forces near the Syrian border.
In July 2019, a drone dropped explosives onto a PMF base near the town of Amerli, in Salahuddin Province, killing at least one resistance fighter and injuring four others.
In June 2018, Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters came under attack in Syria’s border town of al-Hari, in the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, as they were chasing Daesh terrorists out of the area.
Both the Syrian government and Hashd al-Sha’abi declared back then that the attack near the Iraqi-Syrian border had been deliberate and could only have been carried out by either Israel or the United States.