Unidentified drone kills one in east Syria: Monitor

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least one person was killed and four injured in an unidentified drone strike in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province on Friday, a war monitor reported. 

“One person was killed and four injured, whose identities are unknown, when an unknown drone targeted a car near the medical clinic in the town of Mahkan in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.

Mahkan is located in Deir ez-Zor’s Mayadin district, an area known for being the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliated militias in Syria. 

The strike also comes amid heightened regional tensions, with Israel striking Iranian and pro-Iranian targets in Syria and Lebanon against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war. 

Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its over a decade-long civil war, often claiming to target pro-Iran militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group which supports the Syrian army. 

The strikes have increased since October 7 of last year, when Palestinian Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, large-scale attack on Israeli territory that has prompted significant retaliation. 

Israel rarely confirms strikes attributed to it in Syria but has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold there.

On Thursday, Israeli airstrikes in Syria’s central Homs and Hama provinces targeted a car factory and a military position of the Syrian army.