Israeli strike in Damascus kills 4 Iranian Revolutionary Guards

BEIRUT/ DAMASCUS:

An Israeli missile strike on the Syrian capital Damascus on Saturday killed four members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including the head of the force’s intelligence unit, a security source in the regional pro-Syrian alliance told Reuters.

In Tehran, the Revolutionary Guards named four military advisers killed in the Israeli strike, but did not give their rank and said further details would be released later. Iranian state television said the targeted building was the residence of Iranian advisers in the Syrian capital.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has long pursued a bombing campaign against Iran’s military and security presence in Syria. It has turned to deadlier strikes since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by fighters from the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas from Gaza, Opens a New Tab.

Syrian state media reported an Israeli “airstrike” on a building in the Mazzeh district of Damascus and said Syrian air defenses shot down a number of missiles.

The security source, part of a network of groups close to the Syrian government and main ally Iran, said the high-rise building was used by Iranian advisers who support the government of President Bashar al-Assad and was completely leveled by “targeted precision Israeli missiles”.

The source said a fifth person was also killed, but could not immediately identify the nationality.

said Essam Al-Amin, head of Al-Mowasat Hospital in Damascus Reuters that his hospital had received one body and three wounded, including a woman, after Saturday’s attack.

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ONE Reuters a witness in Mazzeh saw ambulances and fire engines gathering around the strike site, which had been cordoned off. Rescue operations for people trapped under the rubble continued throughout the day.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed Palestinian faction based in Syria and Lebanon, condemned Saturday’s airstrike but said Reuters that none of their members were injured, dismissing reports that some were in the bombed building.

Iran and its military allies in Syria have entrenched themselves in wide swaths of eastern, southern and northern Syria and many suburbs around the capital, both to support Assad against domestic enemies and to trample arch-nemesis Israel.

In December, an Israeli airstrike killed two Guardsmen, and another near Damascus on December 25 killed a senior Guardsman adviser who oversaw military coordination between Syria and Iran.

Israel responded to Hamas’s shock attack on October 7 by launching a devastating air and ground war in Gaza aimed at eliminating its ruling Islamist group. The conflict has reverberated across the Middle East with violence rising in Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq and the Red Sea.

In Lebanon, the country’s heavily armed Iranian proxy Hezbollah as well as local wings of Palestinian resistance groups have fired rockets across the border into Israel in a show of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed two Hamas members as they were traveling in their car, three security sources said. Reuters.