BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on Monday in a Damascus neighborhood killed a top Iranian general, Iranian state media reported.
The death of Seyed Razi Mousavi, a long-time advisor to the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, It comes as clashes continue to intensify along the Lebanese-Israeli border between the Hezbollah terrorist group and Israeli forces, with fears that the war between Israel and Hamas will trigger a regional spillover with Iranian-backed groups. Israeli strikes killed two other generals earlier this month in Syria.
Israel attacked the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood, located near a Shiite Muslim shrine, according to the official Iranian news agency IRNA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war observatory based in Britain. IRNA described Mousavi as a close companion of General Qassim Soleimanithe head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was killed 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.
Although IRNA did not provide other details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli army attacked Mousavi after he entered a farm in the area, which was allegedly one of several Hezbollah offices.
The Lebanese terrorist group, along with Iran and Russia, has played a key military role in keeping Bashar Assad’s regime in power throughout the Syrian conflict.
In recent years, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against targets within regime-controlled areas of war-torn Syria. It does not usually acknowledge its airstrikes in Syria. But when it does, it says it targets Iranian-backed groups that have backed Assad.
IRNA said Moussavi was “one of the most experienced advisers” deployed in Syria by the Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi threatened that Israel “will pay” for killing this important military leader.
Source: With information from AP and AFP
