Iran troops evacuate from Syria’s Deir Al-Zor

Iran has begun evacuating its troops in the Syrian eastern town of Deir Al-Zor after “an unidentified aircraft” allegedly flew over the area “for half an hour,” The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday.

“Iranian forces have started evacuating from its headquarters in Syria’s Deir Al-Zor after an unidentified aircraft flew over the area for 30 minutes,” the Israeli daily quoted local sources as saying.

The sources added that the aircraft was “not Russian, Iranian or Syrian.”

“The plane did not carry out any attacks,” the sources pointed out, explaining that it just flew over the area and then left. “No shots were fired at the plane by the Iranian forces,” they stressed.

READ: 18 killed by suspected car bomb in Syria’s Idlib

The move comes amid escalating tensions between the United States and Iran in the area surrounding the Hormuz Strait, which is located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

The Iranian militias were reported to have been positioned across the south and the east of Syria, including the Sayyidah Zaynab area in the capital city of Damascus, Aleppo’s southern rural area, the eastern province of Hama, and Deir Al-Zor.

Tehran is thought as seeking to secure the land route between Iran and Lebanon’s Beirut, to ensure that military supplies reach its militias through the Al-Qa’im border crossing, and to spread Shiite branch of Islam across all areas under its control.

The Iranian military has been joining the troops of Russia and Hezbollah to support the Syrian army led by the president Bashar Al-Assad. Together, they have launched several raids and military operations, which had targeted armed opponents and civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians.