Al Jazeera :
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says four of its “military advisers” have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a residential building in Syria’s capital, Damascus.
Syrian state media SANA said the attack on Saturday took place in the Mazzeh neighbourhood. It said “Israeli aggression” targeted the building.
A well-informed source told Al Jazeera the target was an IRGC intelligence unit, adding that a senior IRGC intelligence official in Syria and his assistants were in the building.
In a brief statement, the IRGC said an air strike by Israeli fighter jets killed “a number of Syrian forces and four military advisers”. It later identified the people killed as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi and Saied Karimi, without sharing their ranks.
Iranian state television called it a “terrorist” attack by Israel, which has yet to comment.
The attack, which is believed to have been carried out with at least four missiles, completely destroyed a four-storey building, according to Iranian state media. At least one person was taken to hospital. Saturday’s strike comes amid widening tensions in the region and the Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed nearly 25,000 people.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. “Syria is not only a battleground of the power struggle between the regional and the global powers, but also is a ground for the intelligence wars as well,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran.
“For Iran, Lebanon and particularly for Hezbollah, Syria is a crucial element in the so-called ‘Axis of the Resistance’, so that’s why all their presence in Syria is kept secret,” he added.
Last month, an Israeli air attack on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime IRGC adviser in Syria.
Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.