8 killed as Israel strikes Iran embassy annex in Damascus: monitor

Israeli strikes hit an Iranian consulate annex in Syria’s capital Monday, state media said, amid rising regional tensions due to the Gaza war, as a war monitor reported eight people were killed.

Iranian state media said a senior commander with Quds Force of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was among the dead.

Israeli strikes on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital have killed a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media has reported.

“Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, one of the senior commanders of the IRGC’S Quds Force, was martyred in an attack by Zionist regime fighters on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s consulate building in Damascus,” state TV reported.

The Quds Force is the foreign operations arm of the Guards, AFP reports.

It was the fifth strike in eight days to hit Syria, whose President Bashar al-assad is widely supported by Iran and its allies.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, but the incident will further raise tensions as Israel has intensified its strikes on Iran-linked militant groups during its war in Gaza against Hamas.

Syria’s official news agency SANA said “the Israeli attack targeted the Iranian consulate building in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus”.

AFP correspondents at the scene confirmed the building next to the embassy, an annex, had been levelled, in an upscale neighbourhood of Damascus. AFP images showed a pile of rubble about two stories high beside a fenced compound.

Iranian media also reported that the strikes in Damascus completely destroyed the annex building, and that the ambassador was unharmed. “Hossein Akbari, ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, and his family were not harmed in the Israeli attack,” Iran’s Nour news agency said. Britain-based group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said: “Israeli missiles… destroyed the building of an annex to the Iranian embassy… in Damascus, killing six people”, in an initial toll it quickly raised to eight. Syria’s defence ministry said there were many “wounded, killed” in an Israeli strike, and the Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad denounced the attack after visiting the site.