Syria
Officials vow revenge after top Revolutionary Guard member Sayyed Razi Mousavi was reportedly killed
Associated Press
Monday, December 25, 2023, 9:30 p.m. GMT
An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood killed a senior Iranian general on Monday, Iranian state media said.
Iranian officials and allied militant groups in the region vowed revenge for the killing but did not immediately launch a retaliatory strike.
The killing of Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a long-time adviser to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, comes amid ongoing fears that the war between Israel and Hamas could spark regional spillover. Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have launched attacks on Israel and its allies in support of Hamas.
Clashes between Hezbollah and Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border have continued to intensify, with daily exchanges of rockets, airstrikes and shelling across the border.
In the Red Sea, attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on ships they believe are linked to Israel have disrupted trade and prompted the launch of a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping lanes.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq, operating under an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, have also carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. troop bases in Iraq and Syria in what they say is retaliation for support for Israel Washington represented.
The group claimed to have attacked a US base next to the commercial airport in Erbil, northern Iraq, on Monday. Three US personnel were injured in the attack, one of whom was in critical condition.
In response, the U.S. military carried out a precision retaliatory airstrike that likely killed “a number of Kataib Hezbollah fighters” and destroyed several facilities used by the group, officials said.
Two more generals were killed in Israeli strikes in Syria earlier this month.
Israel on Monday attacked the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, which is near a Shiite Muslim shrine, Iran's official IRNA news agency and Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. IRNA described Mousavi as a close associate of General Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
Neither the Israeli military nor Syrian state media immediately commented on Monday's attack. Israeli officials declined to comment.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that Mousavi “was martyred while serving as an adviser to the resistance front, defending holy shrines in Syria and defending Islamic ideals.” He threatened that “the Israeli regime will definitely pay for this crime.”
Hossein Akbari, Iran's ambassador to Syria, condemned the killing and said Mousavi was in Syria as an “official military adviser.”
“[Israel] “We will definitely receive a response to this crime at the right time and in the right situation,” Akbari said from Damascus.
Although IRNA did not provide further details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli military targeted Mousavi after he entered a farm in the area that was said to be one of several Hezbollah offices. The Lebanese militant group, alongside Iran and Russia, played a key military role in keeping President Bashar Assad's government in power during the Syrian conflict.
In a statement, Hezbollah called Mousavi “one of the best brothers who has dedicated decades of his honorable life to supporting the Islamic resistance in Lebanon.”
Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on targets in government-held parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. It does not normally recognize its airstrikes on Syria. But if it does, Israel says it is targeting Iranian-backed groups there that have supported Assad's government.