Iran will exact revenge on Israel after a high-ranking military chief was killed in a Christmas Day airstrike in Syria, Revolutionary Guard commander General Hossein Salami has declared.
Hundreds of mourners accompanied the flag-draped casket of General Seyed Razi Mousavi from a central square of Tehran to a shrine in the north of the city where he was buried.
Salami said: “We will never keep silent in the face of martyrdom of the sons of this nation.
“Our revenge will be tough as always, but a revenge that could compensate for the martyrdom of Seyed Razi is nothing but the removal of Israel from the face of existence.”
The airstrike, in a Damascus neighbourhood, resulted in the death of Mousavi, a long-time adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
It came as clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border between Hezbollah and Israel continue to intensify with fears of the Israel-Hamas war sparking a regional spillover with Iran-backed groups. Other airstrikes killed two other generals earlier this month in Syria.
Israel is believed to have struck the Sayida Zeinab neighbourhood, located near a Shiite Muslim shrine, Iran’s official news agency IRNA and Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
IRNA described Mousavi as a close companion of General Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was himself killed in a US drone strike in Iraq almost four years ago.
Neither the Israeli military nor Syrian state media immediately issued a statement about the attack.
Though IRNA did not offer other details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli military targeted Mousavi after he entered a farm in the area, allegedly one of several offices for Hezbollah.
The Lebanese militant group, alongside Iran and Russia, has played a key military role in keeping President Bashar Assad’s government in power throughout the Syrian conflict.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.
It does not usually acknowledge its airstrikes on Syria. But when it does, it says it is targeting Iranian-backed groups there which have backed Assad’s government.
