Official banner of Al-Ashtar. Click to see full-size image.
Al-Ashtar Brigades, a little known Iran-linked Shiite armed group in Bahrain, said on May 2 that it was responsible for a recent drone attack on the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat.
The attack, which took place on April 27, targeted the headquarters of the Trucknet land shipping company in Eilat, the group said in a statement, adding that the attack was carried out in support of the Palestinian cause and the resistance in the Gaza Strip.
“The Islamic resistance in Bahrain affirms that it will continue to move and support our patient people in resilient Gaza and that it will not stop its operations until the Zioniest aggression on Gaza is over,” the group concluded.
Al-Ashtar Brigades first surfaced in 2013, two years after the Bahraini government crushed the 2011 Shitte uprising in the country.
Up until 2017, the group carried out several attacks against Bahraini security forces. As a result, it was designated as a terrorist organization not only by Bahrain, but also by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States and Canada.
The Bahraini government claims that the al-Ashtar Brigades receive support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its allies in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq. During the 2017-2021 Qatar diplomatic crisis, the group was even accused of receiving support from Doha.
Hebrew media didn’t report any drone infiltration warnings or interceptions over Eilat on April 27. However, this does not mean that the attack failed as the Israeli military has the power to censor all news on attacks and security incidents.
This was the first time al-Ashtar Brigades have announced an attack on Israel since the country launched a devastating war on Gaza in response to the October 7 Hamas-led surprise attack. It is highly unlikely that the drone attack was launched from Bahrain.
IRGC allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen all launched attacks against Israel, and even in some cases against U.S. forces in the region, after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The main goal is to pressure the Israeli government to end the war.
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history is easily forgotten. what of those many thousands that were “disappeared” many years ago because they happened to be shiite people?