An alleged Israeli airstrike Monday in a Damascus neighborhood killed a high-ranking Iranian general, Iranian state media said.
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The killing of Razi Mousavi, a long-time adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, comes as clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border between Hezbollah and Israel continue to intensify with fears of the Israel-Hamas war sparking a regional spillover with Iran-backed groups. The alleged Israeli strikes killed two other generals earlier this month in Syria.
In a statement, the IRGC said Mousavi was martyred in a criminal missile attack by the "fake and child-killing Zionist regime" adding that the usurping and savage Israeli regime would undoubtedly pay the price for this crime.
The IRGC statement emphasized that more details would be provided to the Iranian nation soon. Israel struck the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood, located near a Shiite Muslim shrine, Iran's official news agency IRNA, and Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. IRNA described Mousavi as a close companion of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force who was slain in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
Neither the Israeli military nor Syrian state media immediately issued a statement about the attack. Though IRNA didn't provide other details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli military targeted Mousavi after he entered a farm in the area, which allegedly was one of several offices for Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group, alongside Iran and Russia, has played a key military role in keeping President Bashar Assad's government in power throughout the Syrian conflict.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. It doesn't usually acknowledge its airstrikes on Syria. But when it does, it says it's targeting Iranian-backed groups there that have backed Assad's government.
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