Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that “Israel will be punished” for an air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, at an Iranian embassy annex in Damascus.
“The evil Zionist regime will be punished at the hands of our brave men. We will make them regret this crime and the other ones,” the ayatollah said in a message published on his official website.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps named Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and another high-ranking officer, Brigadier General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, as among seven of its members killed in yesterday’s attack.
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight people were killed when “Israeli missiles… destroyed the building of an annex to the Iranian embassy”.
The targeted building is next to the Iranian embassy, the front of which is decorated with a large portrait of Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 in a US drone strike in Iraq.
The Damascus strikes were the fifth in a week to hit Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is supported by Iran.
