Israeli airstrike kills ‘high-ranking’ Iranian advisers in Syria

Damascus: An Israeli strike on the Syrian capital has destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.

The Syrian army said the building in the tightly guarded western Damascus neighbourhood 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.

Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus blamed on Israel.Credit: AP

A few hours later, an Israeli drone strike on a car near the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre killed two people, including a Hezbollah member, who were in the vehicle and two people who were in a nearby orchard, an official with the group and Lebanon’s state news agency said. One of those killed was Ali Hudruj, a local Hezbollah commander, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, without giving further details.

Meanwhile, multiple ballistic missiles and rockets were launched by Iranian-backed militants in Western Iraq targeting al-Asad air base in Iraq, where some US personnel are based, the United Sates Central Command said.

The statement did not confirm the extent of any US injuries but said personnel were being evaluated for traumatic brain injury.

The U.S. military’s assessment was more severe than initial accounts from security sources in Iraq, who, along with an Iraqi government source, had only reported rocket fire against the base. Offering a sense of the scale of the attack, Central Command said most of the missiles were intercepted though others hit the base.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, the US military has come under attack at least 58 times in Iraq and another 83 times in Syria by Iran-backed militants, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.

Nour News, which is believed to be close to Iran’s intelligence apparatus, identified two of the dead in Damascus as General Sadegh Omidzadeh, the intelligence deputy of the guard’s expeditionary Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy, who goes by the nom de guerre Hajj Gholam. The guard later issued statements identifying the five dead as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, Saeed Karimi and Mohammad Amin Samadi. It gave no ranks for them. The difference in information could not be immediately reconciled.

An opposition war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least six people – five Iranians and a Syrian – were killed in the missile attack that struck while officials from Iran-backed groups were holding a meeting. The observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said three of the Iranians were commanders, adding that four other people are still missing under the rubble.

The Telegram channel for Iranian state TV reported that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the Israeli attack on Damascus, adding that “the Islamic Republic will not leave the crimes of the Zionist regime unanswered”.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani condemned the Israeli strike and said that “without any doubt, the blood of these high-ranking martyrs will not be wasted”.

Security forces deployed around the destroyed four-story building as ambulances and fire engines were seen in the area. A search for people trapped under the rubble was under way. Windows were also shattered in nearby buildings.

A grocer near the scene of the strike said he heard five consecutive explosions at about 10.15am on Saturday (Damascus time), adding that he later witnessed the bodies of a man and a woman being taken away as well as three wounded people.

“The shop shook. I stayed inside for a few seconds then went out and saw the smoke billowing from behind the mosque,” the man, who asked that his name not be used for security reasons, said.

“What happened was terrifying. I collapsed,” said Khaled Mawed, who lives nearby.

The strike came amid widening tensions in the region as Israel pushes ahead with its offensive in Gaza. Israel’s assault there, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, caused widespread destruction and uprooted more than 80 per cent of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.

Emergency services work at a building hit by an airstrike in Damascus, Syria.Credit: AP

Israel launched the offensive after an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel by Hamas on October 7 that killed 1200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Roughly 130 hostages are believed by Israel to remain in Hamas captivity. The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.

Last month, an Israeli airstrike on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime 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.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, 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.

AP, Reuters

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