SUSPECTED ISRAELI STRIKE HITS ‘IRGC INTELLIGENCE UNIT’ BUILDING IN DAMASCUS

Sat 20 January 2024:

A suspected Israeli airstrike struck a residential building in Damascus, with preliminary indications indicating multiple casualties, Syrian state media reported.

Several members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killed in an air strike on a residential building in Syria’s capital, Damascus, according to Iranian state media.

It further stated that the strike happened on Saturday in the Syrian capital’s western Mazzeh neighborhood. Several diplomatic missions, notably the embassies of Iran and Lebanon, are located in the neighborhood.

A well-informed source told Al Jazeera the target was an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit, adding that a senior IRGC intelligence official in Syria and his assistants were in the building.

The attack killed five people in a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organisation that relies on a network of sources on the ground.

“An Israeli missile strike targeted a four-storey building, killing five people … and destroying the whole building where Iran-aligned leaders were meeting,” said the Syrian Observatory.

Syrian state TV reported that “Israeli aggression” targeted the building.

IRGC members killed in air strike on Damascus building: Iranian state media

Several members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killed in an air strike on a residential building in Syria’s capital, Damascus, according to Iranian state media.

Deaths… pic.twitter.com/6v0hKcSJ5V

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) January 20, 2024

Widening tensions

The strike comes amid widening tensions in the region and the Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed nearly 25,000 people.

Last month, an Israeli air attack on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, including against Palestinian and Lebanese operatives.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Earlier this month, an attack said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

Over the past weeks, rockets have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adding to tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

-WITH AL JAZEERA

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