Iran vows to punish Israel for deadly strike on its embassy annex in Syria

Guards generals killedIran said the strike killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members, including two commanders of its Quds Force foreign operations arm, Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi.Zahedi, 63, had held a succession of commands in the force in a Guards career spanning more than four decades.State news agency IRNA said the funeral ceremony of the IRGC members will be held on Friday coinciding with the annual Quds Day, which will see Iranian people taking to streets in support of Palestinians and against Israel.A monitor of the more than decade-old Syrian conflict, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the strike killed 14 people, none of them civilians—eight Iranians, one Lebanese and five pro-Iran Syrian fighters.Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against Iran and its armed allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other militant groups.Regional tensions have flared since the Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s October 7 attack that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed nearly 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged daily cross-border fire since the war broke out, and Israel has also been blamed for multiple other strikes there and in Syria.Hamas condemned the Damascus strike, which it described as a “dangerous escalation” in the wider conflict.



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