At the least three senior commanders and 4 officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations within the Center East had been killed on Monday when Israeli warplanes struck a constructing in Damascus that’s a part of the Iranian Embassy complicated, in line with Iranian and Syrian officers.
The strike in Damascus, the Syrian capital, seemed to be among the many deadliest assaults in a yearslong shadow warfare between Israel and Iran that has included the assassinations of Iranian navy leaders and nuclear scientists.
That covert warfare has moved into the open as tensions between the international locations have intensified over Israel’s navy marketing campaign within the Gaza Strip towards Hamas, the Iranian-backed militia that led the Oct. 7 assault on Israel.
4 Israeli officers, talking on the situation of anonymity to debate delicate intelligence issues, confirmed that Israel had been behind the strike in Damascus, however denied that the constructing had diplomatic standing.
However the Syrian ambassador to Iran, Shafiq Dayoub, stated the strike had focused a diplomatic constructing and was a “clear and full violation of all worldwide conventions and norms.”
Video circulating on social media after the strike confirmed a destroyed constructing subsequent to the embassy, and photographs confirmed an entrance gate with an indication figuring out it because the consular part. The embassy said on X that the constructing housed a consular part and the ambassador’s residence.
Footage broadcast by Iranian and Syrian information businesses confirmed a ruined constructing, burned automobiles, shattered glass and particles on the bottom.
The lifeless included Gen. Mohamad Reza Zahedi, 65, who oversaw Iran’s covert navy operations in Syria and Lebanon, two different generals and 4 officers within the Quds Power, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps stated in an announcement.
Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the Worldwide Disaster Group, a nonprofit that seeks to forestall wars, stated that concentrating on a diplomatic facility could be “akin to concentrating on Iran by itself soil.”
Israeli officers stated the constructing was an outpost of the Revolutionary Guards, making it a professional navy goal.
Iran’s international minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, strongly condemned the strike and stated he had spoken to his Syrian counterpart in regards to the “Zionist regime’s assault on the consulate part of the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Damascus.”
“Netanyahu has misplaced his psychological steadiness as a result of he has confronted back-to-back defeat in Gaza and has not achieved the Zionists’ formidable targets,” Mr. Amir Abdollahian stated in an announcement, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
In Washington, officers expressed fears that the strike may escalate hostilities within the area. After the strike, American troops primarily based in southern Syria knocked down a one-way assault drone, a U.S. Protection Division official stated on Monday evening.
It was the primary assault aimed toward U.S. troops in Iraq or Syria in practically two months. No accidents or injury had been reported, the official stated, talking on situation of anonymity.
The Damascus strike got here as Israeli troopers withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital complicated, Al-Shifa, leaving it badly battered after a two-week raid wherein the Israeli navy stated it had killed about 200 Palestinian militants and arrested tons of of others after prolonged firefights.
Dr. Taysir al-Tanna, a longtime vascular surgeon on the Gaza Metropolis hospital, stated that most of the predominant buildings — together with the emergency, obstetrics and surgical wards — had been badly broken within the combating and the principle gate smashed.
“Now it appears like a wasteland,” Dr. al-Tanna stated.
Osama al-Ashi, a Gazan who went to the realm to examine on his residence after listening to that the Israeli navy had withdrawn, stated that he was instantly struck by the stench of decomposing our bodies and that he had seen mountains of rubble and burned buildings.
“The entire time we had been strolling,” he stated, “we had been stepping on physique components.”
Mr. al-Ashi stated that most of the lifeless appeared to have been shot. Others, he stated, appeared to have been unearthed when Israeli forces bulldozed short-term cemeteries on hospital grounds. Many buildings across the hospital had been destroyed by bombs, missiles and tank shells, he stated.
“The scenes there have been tough to tolerate as a human being,” he stated. “You are feeling like you’re in a horror film.”
The Israeli navy stated that the Palestinians killed had been militants and that those that had been arrested had been suspected militants, together with some believed to be senior commanders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It stated two Israeli troopers had been killed and eight others wounded within the raid.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli navy spokesman, blamed militants for the destruction on the hospital, saying that they had fortified themselves in hospital wards, fired on troopers and refused calls to give up.
“We needed to fireplace on the buildings as a way to cease that and to kill the terrorists,” he stated.
Israeli forces evacuated displaced civilians sheltering on the compound, in addition to some sufferers, and positioned different sufferers in a constructing away from the combating, Admiral Hagari stated.
The World Well being Group stated on Sunday that not less than 21 sufferers had died because the Israeli raid started in mid-March, although the causes of dying had been unclear. By this weekend, 107 sufferers remained — 30 of them bedridden — with out ingesting water and with solely minimal remedy, the Gazan Well being Ministry stated in an announcement.
Israeli forces first raided Al-Shifa in November, sustaining that Hamas militants had constructed a command middle in tunnels beneath it. Hamas and the hospital director stated the ability was solely used as a refuge for civilians.
The Israeli navy later publicized some proof to help its case, together with by displaying reporters a fortified tunnel constructed beneath the hospital grounds. An investigation by The New York Instances discovered that the proof prompt that Hamas had used the location for canopy and saved weapons there.
After little greater than every week, Israeli troops withdrew in compliance with a quick cease-fire. However after the combating resumed, Israeli forces closed in on the hospital once more in March in an try to root out what they stated was a renewed insurgency by armed teams in northern Gaza.
“Hamas and Islamic Jihad have began to rebuild themselves within the north,” stated Admiral Hagari. “They usually re-based themselves inside Shifa.”
Hamas referred to as the destruction on the hospital “a horrific crime” and stated Israel had perpetrated it “with full and limitless help from the administration of U.S. President Biden.”
In a go to to Al-Shifa on Saturday, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli navy chief of workers, declared the raid “extraordinarily profitable” and stated it had confirmed militant teams that “a hospital just isn’t a secure place” for them.
Israeli officers and a member of the Revolutionary Guards, which oversee the Quds Power, stated the Damascus strike on Monday had focused a gathering wherein Iranian intelligence officers and Palestinian militants had been to debate the warfare in Gaza. Amongst them had been leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a gaggle armed and funded by Iran.
Syria’s protection ministry stated the Israeli strike occurred about 5 p.m. native time, when fighter jets entered Syria from the Golan Heights.
The assault got here days after airstrikes killed troopers close to the northern Syrian metropolis of Aleppo, Syria’s state information media and an impartial group reported, in what seemed to be one of many heaviest Israeli assaults within the nation in years.
These strikes on Friday killed 36 Syrian troopers, seven Hezbollah fighters and a Syrian from a pro-Iranian militia, in line with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that tracks Syria’s civil warfare.
Israel’s navy didn’t remark after these strikes, however its protection minister, Yoav Gallant, stated, “We are going to pursue Hezbollah each place it operates, and we are going to broaden the strain and the tempo of the assaults.” He promised extra operations in Lebanon, Syria and “different extra distant places.”
The U.S. Protection Division official didn’t say who was behind the drone assault Monday on Al Tanf base in southern Syria. Iran-backed militias have fired rockets, missiles and drones at U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria greater than 170 occasions since November, however none since early February.
Three U.S. service members had been killed in Jordan, and not less than 34 others injured, in a Jan. 28 drone assault by an Iran-backed militia, the primary identified American navy fatalities from hostile fireplace within the turmoil spilling over from Israel’s warfare with Hamas.
Reporting was contributed by Abu Bakr Bashir, Hwaida Saad, Arijeta Lajka, Riley Mellen, Cassandra Vinograd and Eric Schmitt.
