BICOM

Syria has accused the US-led coalition of killing at least 38 Syrian regime fighters in a bombing raid near the country’s eastern border with Iraq.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike on the town of al-Harra was one of the deadliest attacks on forces allied with Syria’s government, but could not immediately identify who carried it out.

A Syrian military commander told Reuters that drones, “probably American,” had bombed positions of Iraqi factions between Abu Kamal and Syrian military positions. “Aircraft of the American coalition bombarded one of our military positions in the area of al-Harra southeast of Abu Kamal” town in Deir Ezzor, state news agency SANA reported a military source as saying, adding a number of people had been killed.

Major Josh Jacques, a US Central Command spokesman, said that “no member of the US-led coalition carried out strikes near Abu Kamal”.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Russia-supported regime forces are separately fighting ISIS in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor. Regime forces control land west of the Euphrates River that runs through the province, while the SDF are battling to expel ISIS from a string of villages on the river’s eastern banks near the Iraqi border.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army, as well as Iranian-backed militias including Hezbollah, were thought to have removed ISIS from Abu Kamal and its surrounding area last year, but the jihadists have since carried out a number of attacks in the area.