Iranian militiamen on Thursday killed 12-year-old Ali Matar, from the city of Quria, south of Al-Mayadeen, which is under the control of the Iranian militias and the Assad regime, as the boy was trying to swim across the Euphrates River.

The local Ain Al-Furat news site reported that the boy was trying to cross the river using a small cork-filled flotation device and pulling a flagon containing 12 liters of diesel which he was bringing to his mother to provide her with the fuel needed for cooking in light of the high fuel prices in regime-controlled areas.

Nidal Ibo, a former financial official in the ‘Autonomous Administration’ in north Syria, whose family, including his wife and children, have been detained by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in an effort to stop him reporting SDF crimes, has revealed information about the organization’s massive financial deals, particularly concerning oil trafficking and the revenues from it.

Dozens of Iranian regime militia members have reportedly died in the past few days in rural Aleppo from the COVID-19 coronavirus, amid accusations of negligence by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) regarding high levels of infections among its members and affiliated militias.

The town of Qara in the Qalamoun region, in Damascus Countryside Governorate, is reportedly witnessing rising tensions between Assad’s forces and Hezbollah.

According to local activists, the latest hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters stormed the regime-run private Qara Hospital and expelled Assad’s forces from it last week.

The Iranian-backed Afghan Fatemiyoun militias in Deir Ezzor have reportedly begun moving their weapons, ammunition, and rockets to underground tunnels previously dug by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), better known by the pejorative term Daesh.

Lebanon’s far-right Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) has accused prominent Christian figures from Syria and other Arab nations who jointly signed a letter urging US and French Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron to maintain sanctions against the Assad regime of “treason”, calling for them to face legal punishment over the letter.

Fighting reportedly broke out on Sunday (February 14) between members of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and personnel from the Assad regime’s infamous Air Force Intelligence Directorate (AFID) in rural Damascus province.

According to news site SY24’s correspondent in the area, “The town of Al-Ghasoula, near Damascus International Airport in the countryside of Damascus, saw clashes using automatic weapons between groups of Hezbollah militia and the Air Force Intelligence branch."

Russian forces have reportedly begun searching for the remains of two more Israeli soldiers, missing since 1982, in a cemetery near the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

The two soldiers, identified as Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, have been missing since 1982 during the ‘Battle of Sultan Yaqoub’ in the First Lebanese War, along with another Israeli soldier, Zachary Baumel, whose remains were recovered and returned to Israel in 2019, according to a report by the Times of Israel newspaper.

Three local civilians fishing on the bank of the Euphrates River in rural Aleppo governorate were killed by a sniper on Thursday (February 3), with other locals retrieving their bodies from the river.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is working to prevent the Syrian Kurdish parties from reaching an agreement, said a leading member of the Kurdistan National Council of Syria (ENKS).

Speaking to BasNews on Wednesday (January 20), Ibrahim Bro, a member of ENKS Foreign Relations Committee, said the PKK is hoping to derail the dialogue between the Kurdish political parties in Syria which is supported by the US.