Iran accused Israel on Saturday of carrying out a strike in Damascus that killed five Revolutionary Guards members, asserting that it “reserves the right to respond… at the appropriate time and place,” according to a statement issued by Iranian foreign ministry.
Five members of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two leaders, had been killed in this strike that targeted a four-story building in the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus. According to Iranian media, the head of the Al-Quds Brigades intelligence unit in Syria, Haj Sadiq Omidzadeh, his deputy and two other advisors were killed in the attack. A fifth member, wounded in the strike, soon succumbed to his injuries.
The strike, which killed a total of ten people, destroyed a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting on Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The Mazzeh neighborhood is home to UN headquarters and embassies, including those of Lebanon and Iran. According to SOHR, it is also home to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ leaders and to pro-Iranian Palestinian factions.
Commenting the attack, the foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani decried “frequent violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and an escalation in aggressive and provocative attacks” by Tehran’s arch-foe Israel.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to respond… at the appropriate time and place,” he added.
He stated that “the frequent violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the escalation of aggressive and provocative attacks against various targets” in that country demonstrate Israel’s “helplessness and hopelessness on the battlefield against resistance forces in Gaza and the West Bank over the past 100 days.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s ideological army, also accused Israel of carrying out the attack in Damascus using “combat aircraft”. In a statement, they reported the deaths of five of their “military advisors,” as well as “members of Syrian forces.”
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it did not “comment on foreign media reports.”
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