Israel accused of deadly strike on Iranian consulate in Syria

 

Iranian State media says a suspected Israeli strike has destroyed an Iranian Embassy building in the Syrian Capital Damascus with the senior commander in the powerful Iranian revolutionary guard among those killed Israel hasn't commented on the incident these are the latest pictures we have of the scene Iranian State television is reporting the senior Commander is Resa zahedi who led the Palestinian division of the Revolutionary guard K's Force the UK based War monitor the Syrian Observatory for human rights says at least eight people have died but as yet there's no official confirmation of the figures Iran's Ambassador and his family are reportedly unharmed.

Latest update:

Iranian and Syrian state media saying that an Israeli air strike targeted the Iranian Consulate in the Syrian Capital Damascus and our report suggests that the senior commander of the powerful Iranian revolutionary guards Muhammad Raa sahi was killed so very significant a high-profile member of Iran's revolutionary guards reportedly killed so we're hearing now these accusations we haven't had any kind of reaction from Israeli authorities we know that over the last few years Israel has carried out attacks targeting positions and also members of Iran's revolutionary guards but it's very rare for the Israeli authorities to acknowledge involvement in those assassinations so again very significant development we've seen that these targeted assassinations have been happening frequently since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas Hamas obviously is a group that is supported by Iran it is part of Iran's so-called axis of resistance and we are having a reaction from Iran already the Iranian authorities are saying that they're going to give a decisive response so again a very significant development it seems to be a very significant escalation as well with this attack.

farz Maad 

who is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute about this story and there's no doubt about that Anita I think some might want to sort of write this off as part of the ongoing operations that Israel has been conducting against both Iran and some of the Iranian proxies operating out of Syria namely Hezbollah there has been senior very senior Iranian commanders killed in the past including one major strike in December however this is the most senior Iranian revolutionary guard Commander to be killed to date and I think very importantly what differentiates this is that essentially the Iranian Consulate in Damascus which is under international law Iranian territory has been flattened so some major escalation here on behalf of Israel of course the Iranians have a preference to taking the war to Israel via proxies indirectly using Hamas Hezbollah Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others the Israelis here retaliating in a more direct fashion willing to risk that escalation yeSAs and of course we're waiting for absolute confirmation that Muhammad resa zahi is amongst the dead but that is certainly the report that we are getting if we look at these images from the scene of the explosion I'm going to ask our director to pull up those images for us as far as we know what we're seeing here is part of the consulate but the buildings on either side appear relatively undamaged so it does seem to have been a very