Israeli strike on Damascus kills four Iranian Revolutionary Guards
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[January 20, 2024]
By Kinda Makieh and Laila Bassam
DAMASCUS/BEIRUT (Reuters) -An Israeli missile strike on Syria's capital
Damascus on Saturday killed four members of Iran's elite Revolutionary
Guards, including the head of the force's information unit, a security
source in the regional pro-Syria alliance told Reuters.
In Tehran, the Revolutionary Guards named four military advisers who
were killed in the Israeli strike, but did not give their rank, and said
further details would be announced 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 shifted to deadlier strikes in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on
Israel by militants of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist group
Hamas from Gaza.
Syrian state media reported an Israeli "aerial attack" on a building in
the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus and said Syrian air defences had
shot down a number of missiles.
The security source, part of a network of groups close to Syria's
government and its major ally Iran, said the multi-storey building was
used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad's
government, and that it was completely flattened by "precision-targeted
Israeli missiles".
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The source said a fifth person was also killed but could not immediately
identify the nationality.
Essam Al-Amin, head of the Al-Mowasat Hospital in Damascus, told Reuters
that his hospital had received one corpse and three wounded people,
including a woman, following Saturday's attack.
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A Reuters witness in Mazzeh saw ambulances and fire trucks gathered
around the site of the strike, which had been cordoned off. Rescue
operations for people stuck under the rubble continued through the
day.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Palestinian faction
present in Syria and Lebanon, condemned Saturday's air strike but
told Reuters that none of their members were wounded, dismissing
reports that some were at the bombed-out building.
Iran and its military allies in Syria have entrenched themselves in
wide areas of eastern, southern and northern Syria and in several
suburbs around the capital, both to shore up Assad against domestic
foes and encroach on arch-enemy Israel.
In December, an Israeli air strike killed two Guards members, and
another near Damascus on Dec. 25 killed a senior adviser to the
Guards who was overseeing military coordination between Syria and
Iran.
Israel responded to the shock Hamas assault on Oct. 7 by launching a
devastating air and ground war in Gaza with the aim of eradicating
its ruling Islamist group. The conflict has reverberated across the
Middle East with violence surging in Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq
and in the Red Sea.
In Lebanon, the country's heavily armed, Iranian proxy Hezbollah as
well as local wings of Palestinian militant groups have fired
rockets across the border at Israel in solidarity with Palestinians
in Gaza.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike in south Lebanon killed two members
of Hamas as they were travelling in their car, three security
sources told Reuters.
(Reporting by Kinda Makieh and Firas Makdesi in Damascus, Laila
Bassam in Beirut and Nayera Abdallah in Dubai; writing by Maya
Gebeily; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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