Jordan strikes targeting Syria drug smugglers kill five: monitor

BEIRUT: Jordanian air strikes targeting drug smugglers in war-torn Syria have killed five people, including two children and a woman, a war monitor said on Tuesday.

The report by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights came after Jordan´s military said that several “drug traffickers” had been killed or wounded in clashes with Jordanian border guards at the northern frontier with Syria since Monday. “Four people were killed, including a woman and two children, in air strikes carried out last night by Jordanian warplanes that targeted a farm in the border province of Sweida,” the Observatory said.

The strikes targeted areas along the Jordan-Syria border “where drug traffickers carry out smuggling operations”, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its reports.

A fifth person was killed in a separate strike on another farm which belongs to Faisal al-Saadi, a trafficker said to be close to Lebanon´s powerful Hezbollah movement and to the Syrian government´s security department, the monitor said.