Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has accused Israel of an attack on Syria that killed four of its leaders.
Iran's Mehr News Agency quoted unnamed sources as saying, “The Syrian intelligence chief of the Revolutionary Guards, his deputy, and two other Guardsmen were martyred in the Israeli attack on Syria.”
Nur News, another Iranian news agency said to have close ties to the country's intelligence network, identified General Sadegh Omidzadeh, an intelligence deputy in the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, and his lieutenants among the dead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said another Iranian and a Syrian national, unidentified at this time, were also killed in the airstrike.
The airstrike destroyed a building in the Mazzeh district in western Damascus, which is said to have been used by Revolutionary Guards personnel as a base of operations. The Syrian military claimed that the Israeli Air Force fired the missile while flying over the disputed Golan Heights region.
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The Israeli military has not commented on the attack, and Israeli officials have said little about the alleged attack.
Iran has blamed Israel for several attacks in Syria over the past two months, including the Christmas Day attack that killed top Iranian official General Seyyed Raji Mousavi, and just a few days later. That included another attack that later killed a member of Iranian-backed Iraqi militants. Islamic Resistance Movement and Hezbollah group.
Emergency services work at a building hit by an airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Saturday, January 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Iran retaliated this week by attacking an alleged Israeli spy headquarters near the US consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, killing four civilians and wounding six more.
Israel is said to have launched these attacks in retaliation for attacks by Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq since the beginning of the Gaza war. The attacks in Syria are aimed at cutting off a vital arms supply line to Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which has launched a series of attacks along the Israeli border, The Times of Israel reported.
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Israeli Defense Minister Job Gallant told the US Secretary of Defense on Thursday: Gen. Lloyd Austin said Israel would soon make a decision on Lebanon and Hezbollah, stressing that Israel wants a diplomatic solution but is “ready to do this by military force.”
Gallant said on Friday during a tour along the Lebanese border that Israel “is not going to accept this reality for a long time.”
Syrian and Iranian state media reported that four Iranian advisers were killed in an Israeli attack on Damascus. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
“If Hezbollah does not reach a diplomatic agreement that respects the rights of its people to live safely here, there will come a moment when it will have to use force to ensure its security,” Gallant declared.
The United States and Israel remain divided over how to resolve the conflict, even after President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally met after a month-long gap in direct communication.
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Mr. Biden has increasingly called for a two-state solution and Palestinian sovereignty, but Prime Minister Netanyahu this week made clear he would never allow such a development as long as he remains in power.
Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his belief that Palestinian independence would become a base for terrorist attacks, stressing that Israel “must securely control all territory west of the Jordan River,” adding, “That conflicts with the idea of sovereignty. Is it possible?” he added. I agree? ”
A revolutionary carries the national flag-wrapped coffin of a victim of Wednesday's bomb explosion during the victim's funeral in the city of Kerman, about 510 miles (820 kilometers) southeast of Iran's capital Tehran, Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. Defense Force members. Iran on Friday commemorated those killed in a suicide bombing by the Islamic State group in 2020 in memory of a general killed in a U.S. drone strike. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
“I conveyed this truth to our American friends and put the brakes on any attempts to force upon us a reality that endangers the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
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Just under 25,000 people have died in Gaza, according to figures reported by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health and repeated by media outlets such as the BBC and Al Jazeera. The Israel Defense Forces this week claimed that its forces have killed 9,000 Hamas militants since it began operations in Gaza in October. The Gaza Ministry of Health does not distinguish between combatant deaths and civilian deaths.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
