Car bombing kills two pro-Iran fighters in Syria: monitor

BEIRUT (AFP): A car bombing killed two pro-Iran fighters in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on Saturday, a war monitor said.

An explosive device went off in an SUV near the Iranian cultural center, killing two Iran-backed fighters, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Government forces and Iran-backed groups imposed a security cordon around the site of the attack, said the Observatory, a Britain-based organization with a network of sources on the ground in the war-torn country.

It was unclear who was behind the attack in Deir Ezzor city, a stronghold of Tehran that is home to Iranian advisers, institutions, and the cultural center.

Control of Deir Ezzor province, an oil-rich region bordering Iraq, is split between Kurdish forces to the east of the Euphrates and Iran-backed Syrian government forces and their proxies to the west.

Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement have bolstered President Bashar Assad’s forces since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered a conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and militants.