A senior Iranian military official was killed in an airstrike near Damascus on Monday, according to Iranian state media and a regional news agency.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) identified the slain official as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a brigadier-general who was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.
The IRGC said he was one of their oldest advisers in Syria and had accompanied Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Guards’ elite Quds Force, who was killed in 2020 in a US drone attack in Iraq.
The IRGC blamed Israel for the attack and vowed to retaliate. “Undoubtedly, the usurper and savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime,” the IRGC said in a statement read on Iranian state TV.
According to Guardian, The airstrike was also reported by Reuters and Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC. Neither of them provided any details on the source or the target of the attack.
Israel has not confirmed or denied its involvement in the airstrike, but it has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in Syria against Iranian targets and its allies, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah group. Israel views Iran as its arch-enemy and has vowed to prevent it from entrenching itself militarily in Syria.