More tension in the Middle East: five Iranian soldiers die in a bombing in Syria attributed to Israel

Five members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, including the head of Syria’s intelligence service, died in Damascus on Saturday a bombing attributed to Israel from Tehran, which threatened to take revenge.

The Guardians, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, accused Israel of carrying out the attack on the Syrian capital with “fighter jets”.

They initially reported that four of their “military advisors” and “members of the Syrian forces” had died in the shelling, and a few hours later they reported the death of another member of the Guardians, who had been injured.

Iran’s Mehr Agency said the victims included the Syria Guardians’ intelligence chief and his deputy.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a UK-based NGO that has a network of informants in Syria, had reported a death toll of 10.

The bombed building, located in the Mazzeh neighborhood, It was destroyed and was isolated, an AFP journalist confirmed.

According to the OSDH, at the location a meeting of “pro-Iranian leaders” was taking place.

The organization added that the Mazzeh neighborhood is known to host pro-Iranian Palestinian factions and commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

“It is certain that (the bombs) were aimed at senior leaders” of these groups, said the Observatory’s president, Rami Abdel Rahman.

United Nations offices, embassies and restaurants are also located in the Mazzeh neighborhood. “The noise was similar to a missile explosion and a few minutes later I heard ambulances,” said a resident of the area.

In Israel, the army told AFP it “does not comment on information from foreign media.”

The official Syrian press also echoed the attack he accused Israel without further details.

Threaten to “talk back”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry blamed Israel for the attack and indicated that it “reserves the right to respond” to that attack “at the appropriate time and place.”

He also accused Israel, at war for more than three months with the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza, of being involved in a “desperate attempt to spread instability and insecurity in the region”.

The Syrian regime is part, together with Iran, the Palestinian movement Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels of Yemen, of the so-called “axis of resistance”, which has Israel as its regional enemy.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of bombings on its territory, directed mainly against forces linked to Iran, its regional rival, but also against the positions of the Damascus army.

In recent months there have also been Israeli attacks against the airports of Damascus and Aleppo, in northern Syria.

Most of the attacks “are likely aimed at disrupting Iranian weapons deliveries to Hezbollah and Iran-aligned groups in Syria,” said Aron Lund, an analyst at the think tank Century International.

Israel believes sophisticated weapons, including ballistic missiles and drone components, are being delivered “both by land, from Iraq,” and “by air to Syrian airports,” this analyst adds.

The bombings have intensified since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, following the deadly incursion of the Islamist movement, in power in Gaza, southern Israel.

In December, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, head of logistics in Syria for the “axis of resistance,” was killed in an Israeli bombing in Syria, according to Tehran.

In neighboring Lebanon, Hamas number two Saleh al Aruri was killed in early January in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, another pro-Iranian movement in the region.

Source: AFP