Iran bids farewell to slain advisers
Hundreds of mourners gathered on Monday in Tehran for the funeral of members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) assassinated in an Israeli attack in Syria.
The strike in Damascus on Saturday killed five members of the IRGC, the military force said.
The funeral processions in Tehran were planned for three of the five IRGC members killed in Syria. Another funeral ceremony for the other two IRGC members was held in the holy city of Qom.
In a statement on Saturday, the IRGC said that five of its members serving on a military advisory mission in Syria were assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the tightly guarded Mezzeh neighborhood, west of Damascus.
Military intelligence authorities in Syria have reportedly arrested four members of a security detachment in wake of the Israeli attack.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed that a colonel, his assistant, a non-commissioned officer, and a civilian have been arrested.
Mezzeh is considered “almost completely secure” due to the presence of high-ranking military, political figures, and embassies in the area.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Israel’s terrorist act is indicative of the regime’s failure to achieve its malicious goals and the depth of its frustration with the fighters of the resistance front, warning that the targeted killing will not go unanswered.
The strike came four days after the IRGC said it hit an Israeli intelligence headquarters in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region.
The IRGC said its Iraq strike was in response to the recent actions of Israel which assassinated IRGC commanders and the resistance front in the region.
Last month, an Israeli strike in Syria killed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander of the IRGC’s foreign operations arm, the Quds Force. Mousavi was the most senior Quds Force commander to be killed outside Iran in four years.
In early January a strike in southern Lebanon’s capital Beirut killed the Hamas resistance movement’s deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri. A US defense official has told AFP that Israel carried out that strike.
Days later, a strike in southern Lebanon killed Wissam Tawil, the highest-ranking Hezbollah member to be killed since Israel began its onslaught on the Gaza Strip on October 7. Hezbollah blamed Israel for the attack.