The Iran Revolutionary Guards strongly condemned the assault in an announcement.
Tehran:
Israeli air strikes destroyed the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Damascus Monday, Syrian and Iranian officers stated, with a high Revolutionary Guard commander amongst seven members the pressure stated had been killed, amid worsening regional tensions.
Israel stated it might not touch upon the reported assault, however Iranian officers vowed a stiff response with fears of even additional violence between Israel and Iran’s allies triggered by the Gaza struggle.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps named Brigadier Normal Mohammad Reza Zahedi and one other high-ranking officer, Brigadier Normal Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, as amongst seven of its members killed.
Britain-based struggle monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated 11 folks, together with a number of Guards members, had been killed when “Israeli missiles… destroyed the constructing of an annex to the Iranian embassy”.
The toll contains “eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese — all of them fighters, none of them civilians,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory with a community of sources in Syria, advised AFP.
Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, giving a decrease toll, advised Iranian state TV that “at the least 5 folks had been killed within the assault which was carried out by F-35 fighter jets” which fired six missiles on the constructing.
AFP reporters noticed the annex constructing had caved in, and emergency companies had been speeding to seek for victims beneath the rubble as sirens wailed within the upscale Damascus district of Mazzeh.
Safety personnel shielded the positioning the place earth-moving tools was introduced in to clear the particles and take away charred autos from the highway exterior, watched by a crowd of onlookers.
Syria’s defence ministry stated “the assault destroyed your entire constructing, killing and injuring everybody inside, and work is underway to get better the our bodies and rescue the wounded from beneath the rubble”.
– Regional tensions –
Iranian state TV stated Zahedi — a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ overseas operations arm, the Quds Power — was among the many useless.
The Observatory stated Zahedi served because the chief of the Quds Power for Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, including that he was killed alongside together with his deputy, his aide, and the Quds pressure chief of employees for a similar three nations.
Two different members of the Guards and two Iranian advisers had been additionally killed within the strike, the Observatory stated.
The focused constructing is subsequent to the Iranian embassy, the entrance of which is embellished with a big portrait of Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s navy operations within the Center East, killed in January 2020 in an American drone strike in Iraq.
The Damascus strikes had been the fifth in every week to hit Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is supported by Iran, Israel’s long-time arch foe within the area.
Syria’s state information company SANA had earlier reported that “our air defence programs confronted enemy targets within the neighborhood of Damascus”.
Iran’s ambassador, Akbari, vowed the assault “will result in our decisive response”, including “the Israeli assault on the Iranian consulate exhibits the truth of the Zionist entity which recognises no worldwide legal guidelines and does all that’s inhumane to realize its objectives”.
Iranian International Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian known as for a “severe response by the worldwide neighborhood”.
– ‘Heinous assault’ –
Solely the gate of the constructing was left standing after the assault, with an indication mentioning “the consular part of the embassy of Iran”, an AFP journalist stated.
Window panes in buildings inside a 500-metre (550 yard) radius had been shattered, and plenty of parked vehicles had been broken by the blast.
Syrian International Minister Faisal Mekdad additionally denounced the assault after visiting the positioning, calling it a “heinous terrorist assault… killing plenty of harmless folks”, in an announcement carried by SANA.
The Gaza struggle, which began with the October 7 Hamas assault on southern Israel, has devastated the coastal territory and in addition seen Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah alternate close to every day cross-border hearth.
Israel has additionally struck targets in Syria, principally military positions in addition to these of Iran-backed combatants.
Hamas condemned “within the strongest phrases” the assault which it known as a “harmful escalation.”
Moscow, a Damascus ally together with Tehran, blamed “the Israeli Air Power” for the “unacceptable assault towards the Iranian consular mission in Syria.”
The Damascus strike got here three days after the Observatory reported Israeli strikes that had killed 53 folks in Syria, together with 38 troopers and 7 members of Hezbollah.
It was the very best Syrian military toll in Israeli strikes for the reason that Israel-Hamas struggle started, stated the monitor.
“Syria and Lebanon have change into one prolonged battleground from the Israeli perspective,” Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Close to East and Gulf Army Evaluation, advised AFP after the Friday strikes.
The bloodiest ever Gaza struggle erupted with the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented October 7 assault which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, principally civilians, in accordance with an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory marketing campaign, geared toward destroying Hamas, has killed at the least 32,845 folks, principally girls and kids, in accordance with the Gaza well being ministry.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
