BEIRUT (Reuters) – Suspected Jordanian air strikes on southern Syria killed 10 people including children early on Thursday, according to local Syrian media and monitors tracking the conflict.
There was no immediate comment from Jordanian authorities.
Jordan’s army has stepped up a campaign against drug dealers in recent weeks after clashes last month with dozens of people suspected of links to pro-Iranian militias carrying large hauls of narcotics over its border with Syria, along with weapons and explosives.
Local outlet Sham F.M. reported that Jordanian air strikes struck two homes in the town of Arman in the southern province of Suwayda, resulting in the fatalities.
Suwayda24, a Syrian newsportal that monitors developments in the province, said simultaneous air strikes overnight hit the residential quarter of Arman in the province’s southeast, near the border with Jordan.
It said the strikes killed 10 civilians – two children, five women and three men, but did not identify the strikes as Jordanian.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that tracks Syria’s war, said at least nine people were killed in the Jordanian strikes on Suwayda, including two children.
Jordan and its Western allies have blamed the surge in smuggling on Lebanon-based, Iran-backed Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian groups who control much of southern Syria.
Iran and Hezbollah have dismissed the allegations as a Western plot against their ally Syria, which has also denied being involved in drug production and smuggling.
The war-torn Middle Eastern country has become the region’s main site for a multi-billion-dollar drug trade, with Jordan being a key transit route to oil-rich Gulf states for a Syrian-made amphetamine known as captagon, the U.S. and Western anti-narcotics officials have said.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily, Editing by William Maclean)
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