Israel eliminates senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards general in Syria-
A blow to the terror nexus?
Kathmandu, December 30-
An Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital Damascus has killed a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, three security sources and Iranian state media said.
The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Brigadier General Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for co-ordinating 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 Revolutionary Guards’ oldest advisers in Syria.
It said he had been “among those accompanying Quassem Soleimani”, the head of the guards’ elite Quds Force, who was killed in a US drone attack in Iraq in 2020.
How was Quassem Soleimani killed:
“This act is a sign of the Zionist regime’s frustration and weakness in the region for which it will certainly pay the price,” Iranian media cited Raisi as saying.
The Revolutionary Guards said Israel would suffer for killing Mousavi.
Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, condemned the killing, saying that Mousavi was in Syria as a “formal military adviser”.
“[Israel] will definitely get a response to this crime at the right time and the right situation,” Akbari said, speaking from Damascus.
Though the Iranian Republic News Agency didn’t provide other details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli military targeted Mousavi after he entered a farm in the Sayida Zeinab neighbourhood, near a Shiite Muslim shrine, which allegedly was one of several offices for Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group, alongside Iran and Russia, has played a key military role in keeping President Bashar al-Assad’s government in power throughout the Syrian conflict.
Hezbollah in a statement called Mousavi “one of the best of brothers who worked to support the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon for decades of his honorable life”.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group condemned the killing of Mousavi as a “cowardly act”, saying he had played a vital role in supporting the resistance in the region as well as the Palestinian people and their cause.
There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
Israel has for years carried out attacks against what it describes as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it backed President Bashar al-Assad in the civil 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.
Iran has sent hundreds of guards as “advisers” to help train and organise thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to back the government in the Syrian conflict. Fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah have also worked closely with Iranian military commanders in Syria.
Courtesy: Reuters, AP
