The latest strike on the Iranian consulate building could escalate the ongoing conflict in the region.
Israeli Airstrike Inside Syria: The Syrian state media said on Monday that an Israeli airstrike destroyed the consular section of Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing a senior Iranian military adviser and a few others.
It is speculated that the latest targeting of the Iranian consulate building could mark an escalation in the Israeli military’s ongoing attacks on Iranian military officials and allies in Syria. The conflict amplified manifold post the October 7 attack by Hamas inside Israel.
Israel refused to comment on the Syrian media reports.
The Iranian Arabic-language state television Al-Alam and pan-Arab television station Al-Mayadeen, which have reporters in Syria, said the strike killed Iranian military adviser Gen. Ali Reza Zahdi who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016.
Iranian Ambassador Hossein Akbari condemned Israel and said as many as seven people were killed, but first responders were still searching for any other bodies under the rubble. He said two police officers who guard the building were wounded.
Ambassador Hossein Akbari vowed revenge for the strike “at the same magnitude and harshness.”
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, while talking to the media after meeting Akbari, said “several” people were killed. Mekdad in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, condemned Israel over the attack.
Iranian state television said the Iranian ambassador’s residence was in the consular building, which stood next to the embassy.
State news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military source, said the building in the tightly guarded neighborhood of Mazzeh was leveled.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years and these airstrikes have especially escalated after the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s response in Gaza even as in the north Israel’s military is engaged in a bloody conflict with Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Though it rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, Israel has said it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi. A similar strike on a building in Damascus in January killed at least five Iranian advisers. Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.
(With AP inputs)