Iran vows to punish Israel for deadly strike on embassy annex
Iran warned its arch foe Israel yesterday that it will retaliate for an air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, and destroyed its consular annex building in the Syrian capital.
Israel declined to comment on Monday’s strike in Damascus, which fuelled Middle East tensions already inflamed by the Gaza war and violence involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Iranian state media said 13 people were killed in the strike in which, according to Tehran’s ambassador, Israeli F-35 fighter-jets fired six missiles that levelled the five-storey consular building adjacent to the embassy.
The building was reduced to rubble by the blasts which blew out windows in nearby buildings and incinerated cars
parked on the roadside in a leafy and upscale suburb of the city.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that Israel “will be punished at the hands of our brave men. We will make them regret this crime and the other ones.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the attack as a “clear violation of international regulations” which “will not go unanswered”.
“After repeated defeats and failures against the faith and will of the Resistance Front fighters, the Zionist regime has put blind assassinations on its agenda in the struggle to save itself,” Raisi said on his office’s website.
Iran’s mission to the UN warned that the strike could “potentially ignite more conflict involving other nations” and called on the Security Council “to condemn this unjustified criminal act”. (AFP)