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.

The website added that members of the Iraqi Sayyida Zainab militia watched the child while he was swimming and waited for him at the ‘Abbas 15’ checkpoint located on Al-Bouwad Island in the Quria village, opposite the Darnj crossing, indicating that when the child approached the river bank, the militia members started shouting at him, demanding that he come to them and give them a gallon of diesel fuel, which prompted the terrified boy to swim away from them, with the militiamen shooting at him, hitting him in the chest and killing him.

Tehran-affiliated sectarian militias are deployed in regime-controlled areas in the countryside of Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and the Syrian Badia, with these areas, like other areas under the control of the regime, suffering from a lack of fuel, and depending on smugglers across the Euphrates delivering fuel from the areas controlled by the SDF/PKK militias east of the Euphrates to the river’s other bank that is under the control of the regime.

Source: Baladi News (in Arabic): https://www.baladi-news.com/ar/articles/73331?fbclid=IwAR1E_JL-1Wihs126S...

Photo of Ali Matar: Baladi News