Iranian media reported Monday evening that senior IRGC Quds Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi has been assassinated by Israel in an airstrike in Damascus.
In total, seven officers and commanders were killed in the attack, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced.
Israeli Air Force fighter jets allegedly struck the Iranian consulate building, which is also the residence of the Iranian Ambassador to Syria, on Monday afternoon, according to the reports. The embassy and the adjacent consulate/residence buildings are located in the Almezza neighborhood of Damascus.
“At 5 pm the Israeli enemy carried out an air strike from the Golan region and hit the Iranian consulate in Damascus,” the Syrian Defense Ministry said in an official statement.
“Everyone present in the building was killed or injured. The building was completely destroyed and now they are working to recover the bodies and help the injured.”
In addition to Zahedi, his deputy Muhammad Haji Rahimi was also killed in the strike.
Zahedi, a very high-ranking member of the IRGC elite Quds Force, was responsible for operations in Syria and Lebanon, and had previously commanded the elite Imam Hossein Division as well as the IRGC’s Air Force.
Iran’s state-run Al-Alam TV reported that Iran’s Ambassador to Syria, Hussein Akbari and his family emerged “unharmed and in good health following the attack.”
Akbari vowed the Islamic Republic “will deliver a decisive response to Israel’s attack on its consulate in Damascus,” Press TV reported.
The ambassador told Syrian media the attack was carried out using F-35 stealth fighter jets that launched six missiles from over the Golan Heights.
The Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the reports. “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media,” a spokesperson told JewishPress.com.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, an Iranian proxy group in Iraq attacked an Israeli Navy base on the Red Sea coast in Eilat, causing damage to a hangar but no casualties. It’s not yet clear how the advanced suicide drone managed to evade both Jordanian and Israeli radar. It was the first attack from the east to cause damage on Israeli territory.
Israel’s international Mossad intelligence agency also threatened last year to begin assassinating senior Iranian personnel if the Islamic Republic did not pull back attacks on Israel by its proxies in the region.
