BEIRUT: An Israeli air strike outside the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday killed a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, three security sources and Iran’s state media said.
The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.
Iran’s state television interrupted its regular news broadcast to announce that Mousavi had been killed, describing him as one of the Guards’ oldest advisers in Syria.
An IRGC statement said that Moussavi was a “companion” of Qasem Soleimani, the former Quds force leader killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad nearly four years ago.
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Three more fighters were killed in the Israeli strike, a war monitor said on Tuesday.
“Two foreign fighters and one Syrian fighter were also killed in the Israeli strike,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
Moussavi was targeted shortly after he entered a farm in an area controlled by Iran-backed groups, said the British-based monitor with a network of sources on the ground.
Residents in the Sayyida Zeinab district south of Damascus, where the strike hit, reported that Iran-backed groups have tightened security there.
On Monday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi expressed condolences for Moussavi’s death, saying Israel “will certainly pay for this crime.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has intensified attacks in Syria, particularly against Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, since its war with Hamas, which Tehran supports, began in October.
Commenting on the incident, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that Israel would pay for killing Mousavi, who held the rank of brigadier-general in the Guards.
“Undoubtedly, the usurper and savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime,” the Guards said in a statement read on state TV.
Israel has for years carried out attacks against what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it backed President Bashar Assad in the war that erupted in Syria in 2011.
Earlier this month, Iran said Israeli strikes had killed two Revolutionary Guards members in Syria who had served as military advisers there.
