Iranian commander killed by roadside bomb in Syria
AN Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander who was once involved in the detainment of American sailors in the Persian Gulf has been killed in a roadside bomb near the Syrian capital, the paramilitary force has said.
Col Davoud Jafari had been deployed to Syria in a military advisory role and was working for the aerospace arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which develops and operates Iran’s ballistic missile programme.
He was killed by a a makeshift bomb planted by the roadside near Damascus “by associates of the Zionist regime”, the IRGC said on its website. The statement warned there would “undoubtedly” be retaliation against Israel.
Jafari, a drone and air defence expert, was killed alongside his bodyguard when the bomb went off in the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab as they drove past on Monday, a Syrian opposition war monitor said.
The bodyguard was killed instantly while Jafari was taken to a nearby hospital where he died from his injuries shortly afterwards, said Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Uk-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A photograph, reported to be of Jafari’s car, showed a grey saloon riddled with shrapnel holes and with its windows blown out.
According to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, Jafari was one of the IRGC members responsible for the seizure of two US Navy command boats carrying 10 American sailors in the Persian Gulf in January 2016. They had entered Iran’s territorial waters owing to a navigation error and were held for 15 hours by the IRGC, which published photographs of the sailors on their knees with their hands on their heads.
Jafari’s role in the incident was later recognised in a meeting where he received the thanks of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
It is not clear when Jafari was sent to Syria, where Iran has provided critical support enabling Bashar al-assad, the president, to survive the country’s 11-year civil war.
Israel did not confirm involvement in Jafari’s death and rarely acknowledges its covert attacks. But the use of a planted bomb suggests the deployment of on-the-ground agents, a risky operation that could indicate the target was considered particularly high value.
In contrast, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold near the Golan Heights.
Tehran has acknowledged the deaths of dozens of its forces in Syria, though it says they are only there in a military advisory capacity. It has also sent weaponry and deployed pro-iranian fighters from around the region to shore up Damascus.