Israeli raid on Damascus: eleven dead including seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards

A raid attributed to &agrav; Israel ël has visé Monday the consular section of the Iranian embassy à Damascus, killing eleven people including seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in a tense regional context in the midst of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Tehran has vowed to retaliate for the unprecedented raid on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria, where Iran and its allies support the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Israeli enemy launched airstrikes from the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus,” the Syrian Defense Ministry said.

“This crime will not pass without the enemy being punished”, threatened the Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, invoking a “revenge” to come.

An AFP journalist noted that the consular section, which adjoins the Iranian embassy in the Mazzeh district of Damascus where many embassies and United Nations buildings are located, had been completely destroyed.

“All those inside were killed or injured,” the ministry continued.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, announced that seven of its members, including two commanders, were killed in the raid.

Emergency workers and security workers evacuate a damaged car and rubble after strikes on Iran's consular section in Damascus, Syria, April 1, 2024 © AFP – LOUAI BESHARA

In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards confirmed that two senior officers of the Quds Force, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were among the victims.

The Quds Force is the elite unit of the Guardians which intervenes beyond borders.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in the United Kingdom but which has a vast network of sources in the country, for its part reported eleven deaths in total: “eight Iranians, two Syrians and a Lebanese, all fighters , no civilians”.

The NGO specified that General Zahedi was the “commander of the Quds force for Syria, Lebanon and Palestine”.

– “Decisive answer” –

In Tehran, the Iranian Nour news agency reported that “Hossein Akbari, ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, and his family were not injured during the Israeli attack.”< /p>

In a statement broadcast by Iranian media, the ambassador said that the embassy annex had been targeted by “six missiles fired by F-35 fighters.”

He assured that Iran would provide “a decisive response” to this attack.

Roof of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, April 1, 2024 © AFP – LOUAI BESHARA

The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, for his part, called on “the international community” to provide “a serious response” to the Israeli strikes.

Interviewed Monday evening on this raid during a press conference, the spokesperson for the Israeli army, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, responded that he “does not comment on information from the foreign press”.< /p>

By condemning the “Zionist terrorist aggression”, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas denounced a “flagrant violation of international law” and a “dangerous escalation”.

And Russian diplomacy described the attack as “unacceptable”, accusing the Israeli army of being responsible and warning of the “extremely dangerous consequences” for the region.

Emergency workers and security officers evacuate rubble after strikes on Iran's consular section in Damascus, Syria, April 1, 2024 © AFP – LOUAI BESHARA

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, fears of seeing the conflict take a regional turn have been growing, with Iran's allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and in the rest of the region having mobilized in favor of Hamas.

– Significant damage –

The consular annex was reduced to a state of ruin and only the entrance door remained, bearing the words “consular section of the Iranian embassy”, according to the AFP journalist who saw gutted furniture. among the rubble.

The targeted building adjoins the Iranian embassy, ​​the front of which is decorated with a huge portrait of Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds force and architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 in a US drone attack in Iraq.

Windows of buildings up to 500 meters away were broken and a large number of cars damaged.

At the end of the evening, smoke was still rising from the remains of the targeted building, while Syrian security forces were deployed in force in the capital and established checkpoints.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad (center) at the scene of strikes on Iran's consular section in Damascus, Syria, April 1, 2024 © AFP – LOUAI BESHARA

“We strongly condemn this heinous terrorist attack” which killed “a number of innocent people”, declared the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Faisal Mekdad, who rushed to the scene, in a press release taken up by the official Sana agency.

Numerous Iranian military officials have been targeted in the past by strikes in Syria.

Monday's raid is the fifth to target Syria in eight days.

In late December, Brigadier General Razi Moussavi, a senior commander of the Quds Force , had been killed in a missile strike south of Damascus.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in neighboring Syria against Syrian power positions, pro-groups Iranians, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iranian military targets since the start of the war in that country in 2011.

The strikes have intensified since it began on October 7 of the war between Israel and Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah and Iran.

At the same time, Israeli strikes target Hezbollah officials in Lebanon, 'where the pro-Iranian Shiite formation carries out attacks against Israel.

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