2024-01-20T19:54:06+00:00
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/ Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Saturday that Iran would not leave the strike that killed five Revolutionary Guards advisers in Damascus “without a response”, describing it as a “cowardly attack.”
“I condemn this cowardly attack, and there is no doubt that the continuation of such terrorist and criminal acts will not pass without a response from Iran,” Raisi said in a statement.
He considered this attack to be evidence of the “increasing failure of the illegitimate Zionist regime to achieve its evil goals, in the face of the fighters of the axis of resistance” led by Iran and which includes Palestinian factions including Hamas, Iraqi and Yemeni factions, in addition to the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement that Iran reserves the right to respond “at the appropriate time and place.”
Kanaani “strongly condemned the criminal act carried out by the Zionist entity,” which is considered a “desperate attempt to spread instability and insecurity in the region.”
He added, “In addition to the political, legal and international prosecution of these aggressive and criminal acts, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to respond to the organized terrorism of the fake Zionist regime at the appropriate time and place.”
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced that the number of its members killed had risen to five, after it had previously reported the deaths of four military advisors in the strike, which it accused Israel of carrying out.
The strike killed 10 people, including Iranians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It targeted the Mezzeh neighborhood in western Damascus, where several Syrian security and military headquarters are located, as well as others for Palestinian leaders, embassies and UN organizations.
The Iranian Mehr News Agency reported that the Israeli strike killed “the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence chief in Syria, his deputy, and two other members of the Guards.”
“The repeated violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the escalation of aggressive and provocative attacks against various targets” in the country reflect “Israel’s impotence and despair on the battlefield against the resistance forces in Gaza and the West Bank over the past 100 days,” Kanaani continued on Saturday.
In his statement, Raisi considered that “the recent crimes of the usurping Zionist entity are taking place with the support of the dominant countries, led by the United States, and the silence of international forums.”
Iran has repeatedly announced over the past years the deaths of members of its forces in Syria, where it insists they are on “advisory” missions. Iran is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has provided political, economic and military support to Damascus during the 13-year conflict in his country.
Over the past years, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria, mainly targeting Iranian and Hezbollah targets, including warehouses and shipments of weapons and ammunition, but also Syrian army sites.
Israel rarely confirms carrying out such strikes, but it repeatedly says it will counter what it describes as Tehran’s attempts to entrench its military presence in Syria.
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, Israel has repeatedly targeted Syrian territory, and the bombing has repeatedly targeted the airports of Damascus and Aleppo, as well as sites belonging to Hezbollah.