Drone strike kills at least 10 Hezbollah fighters in Syria

Beirut: At least ten Hezbollah fighters were killed in a drone strike in the eastern Syrian desert, where pro-government forces are engaged in a grinding battle against the Islamic State group, a monitoring group said Monday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighters belonging to the Lebanese militant group were killed on Monday morning when their position came under attack from the sky. The group is fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces.

A Hezbollah official confirmed the strike but not the toll. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

It was not immediately clear who was operating the drone. Unmanned aerial vehicles are now widely used in Iraq and Syria by armies and militant groups alike.

Israel has been targeting Hezbollah’s convoys in Syria with growing regularity, saying it cannot allow advanced weapons provided by Iran to be sent to Lebanon. Iran has sponsored and supplied Hezbollah since establishing the group in the 1980s to fight Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon.

But Israel’s strikes are generally confined to western and southern Syria, near the Lebanon and Israel borders. It has also been accused of striking Syrian government positions.

The U.S. has also attacked Syrian pro-government forces by air, but only once in any connection to the war on the Islamic State group, in September 2016, when an air raid killed at least 60 Syrian soldiers. The White House called the raid a mistake, and said it was committed to the war against the jihadist group.

Separately, at least two suicide bombers attacked a police station in Damascus, killing several bystanders, state media and the Interior Ministry said.

State-affiliated al-Ikhbariyeh TV reported that two, perhaps three, assailants attacked a police station in the capital’s al-Midan neighborhood, with one able to enter the building before blowing himself up.

The Interior Ministry said several police officers and civilians were killed.

Firefighters arrived at the scene within hours to inspect the damage, according to al-Ikhbariyeh’s on location report, and security agents cordoned off the area. The blasts damaged the lower floors of the building, and shattered the windows along one side. Blood stained the floors.

Syrian pro-government forces have been confronted with a fierce counter-campaign after months of advances against the IS group in central and eastern Syria.

The jihadists briefly cut off a major highway last week, isolating pro-government forces in the east and sparking a ferocious battle to win back the artery, activists said. The Observatory said two days of fighting in the desert area left 120 Syrian troops, Hezbollah fighters and other pro-government gunmen dead.

Syria’s military has heavily relied on Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-sponsored militias throughout Syria’s six-year-old civil war.