An Israeli airstrike Saturday in Syria’s capital city killed at least five Iranian military advisers, according to reports.
The airstrike was carried out by the Israeli air force while flying over the Golan Heights. The strike leveled a building in Mazzeh, a heavily guarded neighborhood in western Damascus, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) initially identified four Iranian casualties — Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aqazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi and Saeed Karimi — and later added a fifth, Mohammad Amin Samadi, who died of his injuries, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. Several Syrian soldiers were also killed in the airstrike, which the IRGC dubbed a “terror attack,” according to the Iranian state media agency.
There also were other explosions across Damascus, the IRNA reported.
A few hours after the airstrike, an Israeli drone fired at a car near the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, killing Ali Hudruj, a local Hezbollah commander, and another occupant of the car, as well as two people in a nearby orchard, the AP reported.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the Iranian military advisers had been invited into Syria by the country’s government and helped to stabilize and secure the country, the IRNA reported. The advisers were victims of “Zionist assassination” by the Israeli “terrorist regime,” which had “a deep and organized connection” with the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) and other terrorist groups, Kanaani claimed, according to the report. (RELATED: Retaliatory Bombing Against Iran Kills At Least 9)
Kanaani urged the international community to respond with strong measures and said Iran had the right to retaliate, the IRNA noted.
The IRGC claimed that days before the Israeli airstrike, it fired ballistic missiles at Syrian terror bases allegedly involved in recent attacks in Iran and also at an Israeli spy agency in Erbil in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, according to the Iranian state media outlet.