Four IRGC advisors assassinated in Israeli air raid on Syria
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says four of its military advisors have been assassinated in an Israeli strike in the Syrian capital.
The IRGC said in a statement on Saturday that the advisors were “martyred” along with a number of Syrian forces in the attack in Damascus, Press TV reported.
The attack targeted a three-story residential building in the city’s Mezzeh neighborhood which houses several diplomatic missions.
“As a result of an air raid by the barbaric and criminal Zionist regime on the city of Damascus, a number of Syrian forces and four military advisers of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps were martyred,” the statement said.
The statement further identified the martyrs as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aqazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, and Saeed Karimi. It gave no ranks for them.
Nour News, which is close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, identified two of the dead in Damascus as Brigadier General Sadeq Omidzadeh, the intelligence commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy, who goes by the nom de guerre Hajj Qolam. The difference in information could not be immediately reconciled.
Israel frequently targets military positions inside Syria, especially those of resistance fighters, who have played a key role in helping the Syrian army in its fight against foreign-backed terrorists.
The Tel Aviv regime has over the past months carried out airstrikes on various locations in Syria and Lebanon as the illegal entity attempts to expand its aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip to other fronts across the region.
Iran maintains an advisory mission in Syria at the request of Damascus with the aim of helping the war-torn Arab country vanquish the foreign-backed militants who have been fighting the democratically-elected Syrian government since 2011.
Last month, an Israeli air attack on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime IRGC adviser in Syria.
Earlier in December, Israel also killed two IRGC military advisors — Mohammad Ali Ataee and Panah Taqizadeh — in an attack in Syria.
The IRGC announced in a statement that the two officers were martyred against the backdrop of the relentless savagery of the “fake and child-killing” Israeli regime in Gaza.