IRGC says 4 members killed in Israel strike on building in Syria’s Damascus
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says four of its “military advisers” have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a residential building in Syria’s capital, Damascus.
Syrian state media SANA said the attack on Saturday took place in the Mazzeh neighbourhood. It said “Israeli aggression” targeted the building.
A well-informed source told Al Jazeera the target was an IRGC intelligence unit, adding that a senior IRGC intelligence official in Syria and his assistants were in the building.
In a brief statement, the IRGC said an air strike by Israeli fighter jets killed “a number of Syrian forces and four military advisers”, without mentioning their names or their titles. Iranian state television called it a “terrorist” attack by Israel.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor that relies on a network of sources on the ground, said the attack killed five people in a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting.
“An Israeli missile strike targeted a four-storey building, killing five people … and destroying the whole building where Iran-aligned leaders were meeting,” said the Syrian Observatory.
Widening tensions
Saturday’s strike comes amid widening tensions in the region and the Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed nearly 25,000 people.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked 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 groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Earlier this month, an attack said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon’s capital, 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-aligned Houthi rebels.
Iran on Monday struck Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, with ballistic missiles in what it said was an attack on an Israeli spy headquarters, a claim denied by Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish officials. At least four people were killed in the attack.
