Iranian Revolutionary Guard chiefs killed in Syria air strike blamed on Israel

20 January 2024, 16:34 | Updated: 20 January 2024, 16:37

Senior members of Iran's military forces have been killed in a suspected Israeli air strike in the Syrian capital.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard blamed the attack on Israel - which in turn is yet to comment on the strike.

Four military advisers were killed, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence chief for Syria and his deputy, as well as two senior guard members. A number of Syrian forces were also killed, Iranian media said.

Despite not commenting on today's attacks, Israel has carried out strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria for several years. Such strikes have also intensified since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.

“The Revolutionary Guards’ Syria intel chief, his deputy and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel,” Iran's state news agency said. It quoted an unnamed source.

The Iranian government called the strike an "aggressive and provocative" attack by Israel, and named the men as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi and Saeed Karimi.

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The building, which was entirely destroyed, was in the tightly-guarded western Damascus area of Mazzeh, the Syrian army said. It also claimed Israel air forces fired the missiles while flying over Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard is an arm of the country's armed forces and operates as a major political and economic force. It has been present in the Middle Eastern country since 2011 when civil war broke out.

The military force supports President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The Syrian leader runs the country as a police state and has carried out continuous human rights violations against his own people.

The country's media reported security forces had been deployed around the destroyed four-storey building following the strike as ambulances and fire engines were seen in the area.

A search for people trapped under the rubble was also said to be under way. The strike also caused windows to shatter in nearby buildings.

A grocer near the scene of the strike said he heard five consecutive explosions at about 9.15am (6.15am GMT), adding that he later witnessed the bodies of a man and a woman being taken away as well as three injured people.

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The strike came amid widening tensions in the region as Israel pushes ahead with its offensive in Gaza.The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.

Last month, an Israeli air strike on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, an adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria.

Israel has also targeted Palestinian and Lebanese operatives in Syria over the past years. Iranian and Syrian officials have long acknowledged Iran has advisers and military experts in Syria, but denied there were any ground troops.

Thousands of fighters from Iran-backed groups took part in Syria’s conflict that started in March 2011, helping tip the balance of power in favour of President Bashar Assad.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. Such actions in Syria are rarely acknowledged by Israel, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Earlier this month, a strike said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh Arouri in Beirut.

Over the past weeks, rockets have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adding to tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

A few hours after the strike in Damascus, an Israeli drone strike on a car near the Lebanese southern port city of Tyre killed two people, the state-run National News Agency reported.

It was not immediately clear who the target was but such strikes in the past have killed officials from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group as well as the Palestinian Hamas group.