IS Kills Nine Iran-Trained Fighters in Syria, Says Monitor

The Islamic State group killed nine Iran-trained Syrian fighters in an attack on one of their positions in eastern Syria on Thursday, a war monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an IS sleeper cell carried out the dawn attack on the desert outpost outside the Euphrates Valley town of Al-Mayadeen. 

Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said the fighters killed were Syrians led and trained by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. 

At least two IS fighters were killed in ensuing clashes. 

Since March 2019, intermittent fighting has killed more than 1,000 government troops and allied Iran-backed militiamen, most of them in sparsely populated areas of the Syrian Desert, the Observatory says.

More than 580 IS jihadists have also died, the monitor says.

IS overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border "caliphate" in 2014, before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat.

The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, the Observatory says.

The dead include more than 130,500 pro-government fighters, among them foreigners.