US denies killing 38 pro-Syria regime fighters

The United States Department of Defence has denied claims that it carried out an attack on pro-Syrian regime fighters in the country’s war-torn eastern province of Deir Ez-Zor.

“This is neither a strike by the American military nor the US-led coalition forces,” RIA Novosti quoted the Pentagon’s spokesperson, Adrian Rankine-Galloway, as saying.

The Pentagon’s remarks came following the Syrian government’s announcement yesterday that nearly 40 foreign fighters allied with the Syrian regime were killed in an overnight bombing raid on Al-Hari military base in the southeast of Albu Kamal town near the country’s eastern border with Iraq.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the strike was one of the deadliest on pro-regime forces in Syria.

“No member of the US-led coalition carried out strikes near Albu Kamal,” a US Central Command spokesman, Major Josh Jacques, told Reuters yesterday.

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A US official was quoted by the Middle East Eye yesterday as saying that Washington suspects that Israel was behind the air raid.

US-backed fighters and regime forces backed by Russia have been carrying out separate operations against small pockets of Daesh-held territory in Deir Ez-Zor province, where Al-Hari lies.