BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike Monday in a Damascus neighborhood killed a high-ranking Iranian basic, Iranian state media mentioned.
Iranian officers and allied militant teams within the area vowed revenge for the killing however didn’t instantly launch any retaliatory strike.
The killing of Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, comes amid ongoing fears of the Israel-Hamas struggle sparking a regional spillover. Iran-backed teams in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have launched assaults on Israel and its allies in assist of Hamas.
Clashes alongside the Lebanon-Israel border between Hezbollah and Israel have continued to accentuate, with each day exchanges of missiles, airstrikes and shelling throughout the frontier.
In the Red Sea, assaults by Houthi rebels in Yemen towards ships they imagine to be related to Israel have disrupted commerce and prompted the launch of a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to guard delivery routes.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq working beneath an umbrella group dubbed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have additionally launched greater than 100 assaults on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they’ve mentioned are in retaliation for Washington’s assist of Israel.
The group claimed an assault on a U.S. base subsequent to the business airport in Irbil in northern Iraq on Monday. A U.S. navy official, talking on situation of anonymity in accordance with rules, confirmed the assault and mentioned it had prompted accidents however didn’t present additional particulars.
Israeli strikes killed two different generals earlier this month in Syria.
Israel on Monday struck the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood, situated close to a Shiite Muslim shrine, Iran’s official information company IRNA and Britain-based opposition struggle monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights mentioned. IRNA described Mousavi as an in depth companion of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the top of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
Neither the Israeli navy nor Syrian state media instantly issued a press release about Monday’s assault. Israeli officers declined to remark.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a press release mentioned that Mousavi was “martyred while serving as an adviser for the resistance front, defending holy shrines in Syria as well as safeguarding Islamic ideals.” He threatened that the “Israeli regime will definitely pay for this crime.”
Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, condemned the killing, saying that Mousavi was in Syria as a “formal military advisor.”
“(Israel) will definitely get a response to this crime at the right time and the right situation,” Akbari mentioned, talking from Damascus.
Though IRNA didn’t present different particulars concerning the assault, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights mentioned the Israeli navy focused Mousavi after he entered a farm within the space, which allegedly was one in every of a number of workplaces for Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group, alongside Iran and Russia, has performed a key navy function in retaining President Bashar Assad’s authorities in energy all through the Syrian battle.
Hezbollah in a press release known as Mousavi “one of the best of brothers who worked to support the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon for decades of his honorable life.”
Israel has carried out a whole bunch of strikes on targets inside government-controlled elements of war-torn Syria lately. It doesn’t normally acknowledge its airstrikes on Syria. But when it does, Israel says it’s focusing on Iran-backed teams there which have backed Assad’s authorities.
