Footage from Syria: Smoke rises from scene of attack
Iran announced Monday that Sayyed Reza Mousavi, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps with the rank of brigadier general, was killed in an alleged attack in Syria attributed to Israel.
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According to reports from the Tasnim news agency, Reza Mousavi was one of the "senior advisers" to the IRGC in Syria and used to accompany the commander of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated.
The Revolutionary Guards confirmed his death, and threatened that "Israel will pay the price for the crime of assassinating one of our veteran military advisers in Syria." Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi echoed this.
Reports claim that his house was targeted in an airstrike. The Lebanese channel Al-Jadeed reported that Mousavi was entrusted with "coordinating military relations between Syria and Iran" and had lived in Syria for 30 years, maintaining an office in the Syrian Defense Ministry. Previous reports suggested he was involved in "logistic transfers" between Iran, Syria and Lebanon. He was also responsible for transferring funds from Iran to Syria and for the salaries of Hezbollah terrorists.
Photos of Mousavi have been published in the Iranian news agencies alongside all senior Quds Force officials. In one photo he is seen next to Qassem Soleimani, in another he is seen accompanying the person who replaced Soleimani as commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, and in another photo he is photographed with the former deputy commander of the Quds Force Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi, who died of a heart attack about two and a half years ago.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has not reported the attack. However, the news site "Voice of the Capital," associated with the Syrian opposition, claims that Israel is behind the attack in the vicinity of al-Sayyida Zainab, in the rural area of the capital, Damascus. The reported target was warehouses belonging to pro-Iranian militias in the area.
This is not the first time since the beginning of the war in Gaza that Israel has been accused of attacking the Iranians from the air in Sayyidah Zaynab, where there is a large presence of Hezbollah forces and pro-Iranian militias. The place is named after the tomb of Sayyidah Zaynab, a holy site for Shiites in the Middle East.
At the beginning of the month , Iran officially announced that two members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed in an attack in the area. According to Tehran, Israel was behind the attack. According to Tasnim, the dead were "killed during an advisory mission at the front of the Islamic resistance in Syria."
At the outbreak of the war, rockets were launched several times from Syria at Israel. Some of the launches set off alarms in settlements in the Golan, but so far no rockets have landed in the communities but only in open areas. The IDF responded with attacks on Syrian territory, for which it took responsibility.