An Israeli airstrike flattened Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday and killed several people, including a senior Iranian commander, Syrian and Iranian media reported.
The attack could signal a further Israeli escalation in targeting Iranian military figures, but Israel, which rarely acknowledges strikes against Iranian targets, said it had no comment on the latest attack in Syria.
The strike killed Iranian military adviser Gen. Ali Reza Zahdi, who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, according to the Iranian Arabic-language state television Al-Alam and pan-Arab television station Al-Mayadeen.
Iranian Ambassador Hossein Akbari condemned Israel for the attack, saying as many as seven people were killed, although rescue workers were still searching for any other bodies under the rubble.
Akbari vowed revenge for the strike "at the same magnitude and harshness."
Israel has carried out several hundred strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years. But the number has escalated in recent months during the nearly six-month Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza and periodic clashes between Israel’s military and Hezbollah fighters along the Lebanon-Israel border.
An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi.
A similar strike on a building in Damascus in January killed at least five Iranian advisers. Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
