On Monday night, Jordanian aircraft bombed a number of homes of drug dealers and smugglers inside Syrian territory, killing two of them, in the second attack of its kind carried out by Jordan in a week, and the third in a month.
The “Suwayda 24” network said that an air strike, likely Jordanian, targeted a house in the village of Al-Sha’ab in the southeastern countryside of Suwayda, killing Atallah Al-Ramthan and his wife, while Issam Khair was killed after his farm between the villages of Malah and Al-Sha’ab was targeted by a similar raid.
The bombing also targeted an animal farm located near the home of prominent drug dealer Fares Samoua in the village of Arman, southeast of Suwayda, but the network confirmed that the latter left the house shortly before the attack occurred.
According to local news networks, Al-Ramthan and Khair are accused of drug trafficking “sponsored by Hezbollah and Iran in southern Syria,” noting that one of the raids targeted a warehouse storing “Captagon” pills and “hashish.”
For its part, Reuters quoted regional intelligence sources as saying that Jordanian aircraft carried out 4 air strikes inside Syrian territory, targeting “suspected hideouts of drug smugglers linked to Iran.”
The agency said that the Jordanian army intensified its campaign against drug traffickers after clashes in December 2023, with dozens of people suspected of having links to pro-Iranian militias, who were carrying large quantities of weapons and explosives across the border with Syria.
With these raids, Jordanian aircraft entered Syrian airspace to target the hideouts and homes of drug dealers and smugglers, 3 times within one month, and twice in less than a week.
On Friday, Jordanian aircraft carried out 3 air strikes targeting the water well building in the village of Umm al-Rumman, as well as on a residential neighborhood in the village of Al-Shaab, south of Suwayda, which led to the death of the well’s guard and the destruction of the house of a person accused of drug trafficking, but he survived the targeting.
On Saturday, the Jordanian army announced the killing of 5 smugglers, the arrest of 15 others, and the confiscation of quantities of drugs, after about 16 hours of armed clashes with smuggling groups that attempted to introduce drugs by storming the Jordanian border with Syria, by force of arms.
According to local networks, Jordanian border guard forces pursued drug smugglers into Syrian territory and crossed the border between the two countries, until they were able to arrest the smugglers and kill others.
Civilians are suffering from the ongoing battle between Jordan and drug smugglers, whether through air strikes or clashes at the border near their villages, which the smugglers use as a starting point for smuggling operations. According to “Suwayda 24”, 11 civilians, including 7 children and 2 women, were killed in separate Jordanian raids that targeted areas on the border between Syria and Jordan.
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2024-01-09 07:03:10
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