An Israeli strike on the Syrian capital on Saturday destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least four Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.
The Syrian army said the building in the tightly guarded western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh was entirely destroyed, adding that the Israeli air force fired the missiles while flying over Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike. Iran Guards’ Syria intel chief and his deputy were killed in the air strike.
“Two high-ranking Iranian advisers were martyred in the attack by the Zionist regime (Israel) in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus,” Iran’s Mehr news agency said, quoting an informed but unnamed source.
State-run Press TV reported the same information, adding the two were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Israeli strike on Damascus killed five people in a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting on Saturday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war.
“An Israeli missile strike targeted a four-storey building, killing five people… and destroying the whole building where Iran-aligned leaders were meeting,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria said the targeted neighbourhood is known to be a high-security zone home to leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and pro-Iran Palestinian factions.
“They were for sure targeting senior members” of those groups, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. The mid-morning strike, which caused a large plume of smoke to billow into the sky, was also reported by Syrian state media.
Meanwhile, Iran on Saturday blamed Israel for a strike on Damascus, saying it “reserves the right to respond” after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed four of its members had died.
Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani decried “frequent violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and an escalation in aggressive and provocative attacks” by Tehran’s arch-foe Israel.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to respond… at the appropriate time and place” to the latest strike on the Syrian capital, Kanani said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said 10 people were killed in the Israeli strike on the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus.
The Guards’ Sepah news agency said the “evil and criminal Zionist regime (Israel)” killed four of its military advisers, while Iran’s Mehr news agency reported one of them was the force’s spy chief for Syria.—Agencies
