British fighter jets bomb Syrian forces

[Ulquiorra]

British forces have bombed Syrian troops loyal to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, for the first time since April.

A Typhoon fighter jet dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan last month, according to the Sunday Times of London.

A Syrian army officer was reportedly killed and seven others were injured.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense refused to identify the target, but said the strike was a “wholly proportionate response.’’

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British monitoring group, said “explosions’’ had been heard in the desert near a base called al-Tanf, where U.S. and British troops are training a Syrian rebel group fighting ISIS, the newspaper said.

Iranian-backed Shia militias, which are allied with Assad, have been in control of the desert border area since last year. They’ve been targeted by U.S. and British war planes to keep them from reaching the key base.

“As an act of collective self-defense, RAF Typhoons … dropped a single [bomb] on the position, which successfully removed the threat to our coalition partners,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement.