IRGC commander, deputy assassinated in Israeli attack on Iran’s Damascus consular section

Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were killed in the Israeli attack on Monday on the Consular Section of the Embassy.

Syria's official news agency, SANA, said the strikes were carried out by “the Israeli enemy” and targeted the Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus on Monday afternoon.

Iran's Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari confirmed the reports of the Israeli attack and said the regime had targeted the consular building with six missiles.

Akbari said seven people were martyred in the Israeli aggression but the names and the exact number of martyrs have yet to be specified. He also noted that several Iranian military advisors and diplomats were also martyred in the missile attack, whose names would be announced later.

According to the ambassador, the Consular Section of the Embassy was targeted by F-35 fighter jets and six missiles.

Born in 1960, Zahedi joined the IRGC in 1980 and was a commander of the elite force during the Iraqi-imposed war in 1980-88.

He was the commander of the IRGC Air Force from 2005 to 2006. Later he served as the IRGC Ground Force Commander from 2006 to 2008.

Zahedi served as a commander of the IRGC Quds Force from 2008 to 2016.

In a statement, the IRGC’s Public Relations Directorate-General strongly condemned the attack that, it said, had also resulted in the martyrdom of five officers accompanying the commanders.

The statement identified the officers in question as Hossein Amanollahi, Seyyed Mehdi Jalalati, Mohsen Sedaqat, Ali Aqababayi, and Ali Salehi Rouzbahani.

The attack, it pointed out, had come “on the back of the wolfish Zionist regime’s irreparable defeats in the face of the Palestinian resistance and the steadfastness of the people of Gaza, as well as [its] ignominy in the face of the steely resolve of the fighters of the regional resistance front.”