AT LEAST eight people were killed by an air strike on eastern Syria early today.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said the dead included a worker from the World Health Organisation (WHO) as well as an Iranian adviser.

Syrian media confirmed the air attack and said that the eight people killed included an adviser from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.

The attack struck residential areas and military sites in Deir ez-Zor province, according to local media.

The WHO reported that engineer Emad Shehab was killed during the attack when his building in the provincial capital, also named Deir ez-Zor, was hit.

The UN body said Mr Shehab worked as WHO’s focal point for water, sanitation and hygiene in the Syrian city.

WHO Eastern Mediterranean regional director Hanan Balkhy said: “Shehab’s untimely passing marks not only a great loss for his loved ones, but is a stark reminder of the ongoing violence and suffering endured by the people of Syria.”

“My colleagues and I are heartbroken at the tragic loss of another one of our own in an air strike in #Syria this morning,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on the X social media site.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strikes, although the United States said it was not behind them. 

Iran’s news agency IRNA said that the attack was “carried out by the zionist regime,” without providing evidence that Israel was behind the attack.

But Israel has carried out a series of attacks against what it describes as Iranian-linked targets in Syria, although it rarely acknowledges them.

The SOHR said that the strikes were the first of their kind in eastern Syria since early February.

Hammoud al-Jabbour, who lives near one of the sites hit by the attack said: “It was one of the biggest strikes I’ve heard. 

“The windows of my house were shattered, the power was cut in several neighbourhoods and the main roads were closed.”