Iran pledges response to deaths of its advisers in Damascus

The commander of Iran’s intelligence service in Syria and four of his colleagues were killed on Saturday in an air strike in Damascus.

Haj Sadiq Ameed Zada and his deputy Haj Gholam were among the five Iranians killed in the Syrian capital, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said.

Residents reported four explosions that flattened a four-storey building where the Iranian officials had lived.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people, including Syrian civilians, were killed.

There was extensive damage to the city’s Mazzeh district.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said the attack in Syria, widely attributed to Israel, will not go “unanswered”.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the killings were a “desperate attempt to spread instability in [the] region”.

“Iran … reserves its right to respond to the organised terrorism of the fake Zionist regime at the appropriate time and place.”

A Syrian military source said “the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a residential building in the Mazzeh neighbourhood in the city of Damascus”.

“Air defence assisted in repelling the aggression and some missiles were shot down. The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a number of civilians, the destruction of the building and damage to the neighbouring buildings,” the source said.

A resident of the Mazzeh district said: “There are rarely any issues here.

“We heard an enormous explosion, and another followed. There were several after and we saw the smoke emerge.

“It happened in broad daylight. In the morning, many people were just going about their business. It’s a residential place. There aren’t any heavy things happening here.”

Cars were damaged, as were shops and an entire building complex, the resident said.

“Why can’t they just leave us alone? They are attacking Gaza, Syria, Yemen; everywhere and every day Israel attacks somewhere new.”

A security source, part of a network of groups close to Syria’s government and its major ally Iran, said the building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar Al Assad’s government, and that it was entirely flattened by “precision-targeted Israeli missiles”.

A meeting of leaders with close ties to Iran took place at the building that was destroyed in the attack, the Observatory said.