ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An explosive device went off in a vehicle in Syria’s eastern province of Deir ez-Zor on Saturday, killing two passengers, reported a war monitor. The blast took place near an Iranian cultural centre.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the vehicle belonged to Iranian-backed militias.
“In this context, regime forces and militias imposed a security cordon around the explosion site,” the UK-based war monitor noted.
Control of oil-rich Deir ez-Zor is split between Syrian regime forces backed by Tehran and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) with their American allies.
No party has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Syrian state media has not reported the news.
There are multiple actors in Syria’s fractured security landscape.
A suspected Israeli airstrike on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday killed a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF).
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its 13-year civil war, often claiming to target pro-Iran militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that supports the Syrian army.
While it rarely comments on strikes attributed to it in Syria, Israel has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold there.
Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells are also active in Deir ez-Zor.