Iran accuses Israel of killing Revolutionary Guards spy chief in Damascus

The Guardian-Jan 20th2024

Jason Burke in Jerusalem and agencies

A suspected Israeli strike killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ espionage chief for Syria and three other guard members on Saturday, Iran has said, in an attack that destroyed much of a multistorey residential building in Damascus.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said six people were killed in the Israeli strike on the upmarket Mazzeh neighbourhood in the Syrian capital.

In recent weeks, Israel has been accused of intensifying strikes on senior Iranian and allied figures in Syria and Lebanon, raising fears the war in Gaza could expand into a regional conflict.

“The Revolutionary Guards’ Syria [intelligence] chief, his deputy and two other guard members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel,” Iran’s Mehr news agency said.

In a statement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed it had lost four of its members and blamed Israel.

When asked about the strike, the Israeli army said: “We do not comment on reports from the foreign media.”

Tensions between Iran and Israel have risen to a new high after the bloody surprise attack launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October.

Hamas has had a close, if up and down, relationship with Iran for decades, as has Hezbollah, the Islamist militant organisation in Lebanon, which has traded fire with Israel across the disputed border for months.

Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes during more than a decade of civil war in Syria, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions. Saturday’s presumed Israeli strike was the second such high-profile targeted assassination in Syria in less than a month. In December, an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Iranian general there.

Israel has also targeted enemies in Lebanon. On 2 January in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, the deputy political leader of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in a strike widely blamed on Israel.

Days later, Israel killed Wissam al-Tawil, a senior Hezbollah commander, in a strike on his car in south Lebanon.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran, which backs the government of the president, Bashar al-Assad, to expand its presence there.

Israeli analysts have spoken of a “multifront war”, with combat operations in Syria, Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Gaza against what they describe as a coalition of enemies dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state. Iran describes its networks of proxy armed factions as an axis of resistance.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza continued on Saturday with airstrikes and artillery shelling pounding targets across the territory. Fighters from Hamas battled tanks trying to advance into the eastern suburbs of the Jabaliya area in northern Gaza, where Israel has started pulling out troops and shifting to smaller-scale operations, residents and militant sources said.

In the southern area of Khan Younis, where Israel says it has expanded its operations against Hamas, witnesses said tanks shelled areas around Nasser hospital overnight, describing the bombardment as the most intense in many days.

Nasser is now Gaza’s largest functioning hospital. Israel says Hamas fighters operate from in and around hospitals, including Nasser, which Hamas and medical staff deny, though Israel has presented some footage and photos backing its claims.

The Israeli military said that in Khan Younis it raided a military compound, neutralised ready-to-use rocket launchers and found explosives stashed underground while an aircraft struck two gunmen there.

Israeli planes dropped leaflets on the southern area of Rafah urging Palestinians seeking refuge there to help locate hostages held by Hamas since the militant organisation launched bloody attacks into Israel in October, residents said.