Iranian advisers killed in Israeli air strikes on Damascus

IRGC-affiliated media said an Iranian advisory centre was hit, a report later denied by Tehran’s ambassador to Syria

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Several Iranian advisers were killed in Israeli air strikes near Damascus on Monday, according to the Syrian Defence Ministry and a human rights monitor.

In comments shared by state media, the Syrian Defence Ministry said Israeli attacked several locations south of the capital at about 1pm local time, adding that a “number of Iranian advisers” were killed.

It later removed all references to Iran, stating a number of citizens were killed and wounded.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Israel struck an Iranian advisory centre near the Sayyida Zeinab shrine.

Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, later denied in a social media post that an advisory centre had been hit or that “any Iranian citizens or advisers [were] martyred” in the attack.

At least eight people were killed in the strikes, including a security escort to an Iranian officer and two Hezbollah fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

The actual death toll could not be verified.

Iran and its arch-foe Israel have stepped up indirect attacks on each other since the war in Gaza began on October 7.

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, both backed by Iran, have launched rocket attacks on Israel and disrupted global shipping in the Red Sea over the war, while several Israeli attacks have been reported in Syria.

Israel rarely acknowledges carrying out strikes in Syria.

An Israeli strike January killed Haj Sadiq Ameed Zada, the commander of Iran’s intelligence service, and four of his colleagues in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus earlier this month.

That followed a strike on the Sayyida Zeinab area in late December, also blamed on Israel, which killed a senior Iranian general.

Razi Moussavi, a commander with the IRGC’s Quds Force, was the highest-ranking Iranian general to be killed outside the country since a January 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad killed Quds Force chief Gen Qassem Suleimani.

Eleven IRGC members were reported killed in Israeli strikes on Damascus a week later.