The US military said on Tuesday it carried out a strike in Syria's Deir al-Zor against infrastructure facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Reuters reported.

The military's Central Command said in a statement such strikes were aimed at protecting US forces from attack by Iran-backed groups.

The statement cited an incident on August 15, which Reuters reported involved a drone attack on a compound run by coalition and US-backed Syrian opposition fighters, with no casualties.

The statement about Tuesday's strike did not mention whether there were any casualties.

Though there is no indication of any connection, the statement comes a day after Iranian media outlets reported that Abolfazl Alijani, a senior member of the IRGC who served as a military adviser in Syria, had been killed.

The Mehr news agency reported that Alijani, who operated in the Aleppo area, died "during a consulting mission in Syria."

While Iranian leaders deny that the Islamic Republic has a military presence in Syria, Iran is a key supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, having providing the regime with both financial aid and military advisers against a range of opposing forces since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Near the start of the Syrian civil war, it was reported that then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had personally sanctioned the dispatch of officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to fight alongside Assad’s troops.

Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made clear several years ago that Iran would withdraw its “military advisers” from Syria and Iraq only if their governments wanted it to.

Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, in 2019 boasted that his country had “accomplished more than 90 percent” of its goals in Syria.