At least eight people were killed yesterday, including an important leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Muhammad Reda al-Zahedi, in an attack attributed to Israel against the Iranian consulate building, located in a neighborhood fortified Mezze, east of Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that in addition to Zahedi, identified as the leader of the elite Quds forces stationed in Syria and Lebanon, two Iranian advisers and five members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed there. in a preliminary balance sheet.
The attack was immediately attributed by both Syria and Iran to Israel. “The Israeli enemy carried out an air strike from the occupied Syrian Golan against the Iranian consulate building in Damascus. Our air defenses repelled the attack's missiles and intercepted some of them," a military source told the official Syrian news agency SANA. The attack "destroyed the building completely and affected everyone inside, resulting in deaths and injuries," the agency added.
The Iranian ambassador to Syria, Hussein Akbari, and his family were unharmed after the attack on the diplomatic headquarters, which also served as his residence. The diplomat assured Iranian media that he had witnessed the attack from the window of the embassy and that it had been carried out with F-35 fighters.
Akbari stated that Tehran will respond "harshly" to Israel for the attack. "The Zionist regime [Israel] acts against international laws, so it will receive a harsh response from us," he said.
Reuters journalists who were in the district saw smoke coming from the rubble of the destroyed building and emergency vehicles outside. An Iranian flag hung from a pole in front of the rubble. Syria's foreign minister was seen at the scene of the attack along with the Iranian ambassador.
Mezze is one of the most affluent districts of the capital, home to several embassies and homes of wealthy families. Also, it is known as a fortified district, where leaders of the Iranian militia of the Guardians of the Revolution and Palestinians close to Iran usually live and visit.
Yesterday's was the bloodiest attack against Iranian uniformed soldiers in Syria this year, during which eight deaths had so far been accounted for by Israeli bombings, including two more generals of the Revolutionary Guards.
During the morning of Monday, the Israeli air force also simultaneously attacked a dozen military targets of the Shiite militia Hizbullah in the area of Raishaia al Fukhar, in southern Lebanon.
Hostilities in the enclave began on October 8, the day after the war broke out in Gaza, in solidarity between Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamist militias in the enclave, although the crossfire has greatly intensified in recent weeks, raising fears that the conflict will spread across the region.
The clashes have already claimed the lives of 370 people, most of them on the Lebanese side and in the ranks of Hizbullah, which has confirmed 249 militia casualties, some of them in Syria.
Meanwhile, in Gaza the Israeli army announced the withdrawal of its troops from Al-Xifa hospital, the largest in the entire strip and one of the few in the north that was partially functioning, after two weeks of assault which have left the center completely out of service. "The destruction of the complex makes it impossible to resume work and the hospital is out of service," said the director of Al-X ifa, Marwan Abu Saada.
Images released after the Israeli withdrawal show a wide trail of destruction across the area, with buildings destroyed and large parts of the medical complex charred.
The spokesman for the Civil Defense of Gaza, Mahmud Bussal, reported that they have found corpses inside the hospital with signs of having been executed, others burned and also in a state of decomposition. "Most of the bodies are decomposing and we have seen bodies that are burned skeletons inside the medical complex," said Bussal, who noted that it is difficult to count casualties because Israeli troops "raised the streets with backhoes and bury the bodies".
The Ministry of Health indicated that the military operation around Al-Xifa had killed 400 people, without counting the number of victims inside the medical complex. The total number of dead in almost six months of war already exceeds 32,800, and the wounded, 74,500.
On Sunday, there were 107 patients inside the compound "in inhumane conditions, without water, medicine, food or electricity", including 30 disabled people and around 60 members of the medical staff.
