2,100 fighters killed in Iraq, Syria: Iranian official

TEHRAN (AA) - More than 2,000 Iranian fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria, an Iranian official said Tuesday.

“About 2,100 fighters have been killed in Iraq and elsewhere,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted Mohammad Ali Shahidi Mahallati, an official at Iran’s Foundation for Martyrs’ and Veterans’ Affairs, as saying.

Mahallati did not, however, provide any time reference as to when exactly the fighters were killed.

Iran is a staunch supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, which has been riven by civil conflict since 2011 when regime forces put down pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, the Iranian government has sent a number of “military advisers” to Syria -- along with Shia volunteer fighters from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan -- to support the embattled Assad regime.

Tehran also supports the Iraqi government’s ongoing fight against the Daesh terrorist group, which overran vast swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq in mid-2014.

In 2016, Iran’s Consultative Assembly (parliament) passed a bill granting Iranian citizenship to the families of slain foreign fighters.

Last November, the Iranian authorities said around 1,000 fighters had been killed in war-torn Syria.

In January, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps of recruiting thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran for military service since 2013.