Syria: Fighting in eastern Deir Az-Zour kills at least 13, war monitor says

Fighting between pro-Iranian groups supporting the Syrian regime and Kurdish-led forces killed 13 people, mostly civilians, a war monitor said on Friday.

Six children were among the victims of intense shelling of Dahla in the eastern province of Deir Az-Zour, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

Fighting erupted on Wednesday when pro-Iranian fighters attacked Kurdish-held areas, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also reported that 11 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in Dahla.

The SOHR said pro-Iran fighters carried out a "massacre" that "resulted in the death of 11 people, including women and six children," in Dahla.

Two members of Iranian-backed militias were meanwhile killed and three wounded in shelling by the SDF targeting Al-Bulil village on the western bank of the Euphrates river, the monitor said.

The US-backed SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.

Arab-majority Deir Az-Zour province, a resource-rich region which borders Iraq, is bisected by the Euphrates river and home to dozens of local tribal communities, some of whose fighters joined the SDF in its battle against IS.

On Wednesday, pro-Iran groups supervised by Syrian regime officers succeeded in crossing the Euphrates, coming dangerously close to the Al-Omar oil fields where American troops are based, the SOHR said.

Pro-Iran fighters were subsequently pushed back to the opposite side of the Euphrates following fighting that left seven dead, among them an SDF fighter, three pro-Iran militia men, and three civilians, it added.

The fighting comes amid growing regional tensions between Iran and its allies on one side, and Israel, currently waging a war in Gaza, and its backer Washington on the other.

Iran and Hezbollah have promised to respond to assassinations of the chief of the Palestinian Hamas group and the military leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, widely blamed on Israel.

Iran has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces through more than a decade of civil war.

The United States has around 900 troops in Syria that are part of an anti-jihadist coalition and also maintain a base on the Conoco gas field.

In September 2023, the United States intervened to stop similar fighting in Deir Az-Zour from escalating, in a country devastated and fragmented by more than 13 years of war.