(Beirut) Seven people, including pro-Iranian fighters, were killed Monday in an Israeli strike south of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) announced.
“Three Israeli missiles targeted a base of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards,” the ideological army of the Iranian regime, “in the neighborhood of Sayeda Zeinab, killing at least seven people,” the director told AFP. of the OSDH, Rami Abdel Rahmane.
Two Syrians, including the bodyguard of a Revolutionary Guard officer, are among the dead, added the NGO based in the United Kingdom and which has a vast network of sources in Syria at war.
The NGO did not specify whether civilians were among the victims.
The Iranian press agency Tasnim for its part affirmed that “the Zionist regime targeted a center of Iranian advisers” in the Sayeda Zeinab district.
But on
For its part, the Syrian Ministry of Defense affirmed in a statement that “the Zionist enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the occupied Syrian Golan against positions south of Damascus, killing several Iranian advisers and civilians and injuring others, in addition to material damage.
The ministry later amended the statement, removing the mention of Iranian advisers made earlier.
Repeated strikes
The Sayeda Zeinab complex, an important Shiite pilgrimage site, has been defended since the start of the war in Syria in 2011 by Shiite militiamen, notably from the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, alongside the Damascus army.
Bases of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are established in the neighborhood, according to the OSDH.
Tehran has sent soldiers presented as advisers in support of the Syrian army since 2011.
Since the end of December, two other strikes have targeted Iranian objectives in Syria, in a tense regional context, against a backdrop of war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
Tehran had accused Israel of having eliminated Brigadier General Razi Moussavi, a member of the Quds Force, the foreign operations branch and the elite unit of the Guardians, at the end of December.
Razi Mousavi is the most senior commander of this force to be killed outside Iran since General Qassem Soleimani, a key figure in the Islamic Republic in the Middle East, was killed in a US raid in Iraq on January 3, 2020.
On January 20, 13 people, including five advisers to the Revolutionary Guards, were killed in Damascus in an airstrike blamed on Israel, according to the OSDH.
Iranian media presented one of the victims as being the head of intelligence in Syria for the Quds Force.
Since 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria, mainly targeting pro-Iran forces, including Hezbollah, allies of the Syrian regime, as well as the Syrian army.