ISRAEL BEHIND KILLING OF GUARDS COLONEL IN SYRIA: IRAN

An improvised bomb has killed an Iranian colonel from the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps near Syria’s capital Damascus, Iranian media reported on Wednesday, blaming arch foe Israel.

The Islamic republic regularly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, which in turn sees Iran, with its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and its regional proxies, as its biggest security threat.

“Colonel Davoud Jafari, one of Iran’s military advisers in Syria and a member of the Guards’ aerospace arm, was killed with a makeshift bomb planted by the roadside,” the Tasnim news agency reported citing a Guards statement.

The IRGC’s aerospace department manufactures drones, missiles and satellites.

Tasnim said Jafari was killed on Monday “by associates of the Zionist regime” - its term for Israel, a country with which Iran has waged a shadow war of attacks, assassinations and acts of sabotage for years.

It vowed that “undoubtedly, the criminal Zionist regime will receive the adequate response for this crime”.

Tehran accuses Israel of a campaign of assassinations, including of scientists involved in what Iran insists is a peaceful nuclear programme.