Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel in response to an airstrike which killed a group of its senior commanders in Syria.
According to reports, that an Israeli warplane flattened the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing six people including a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, IRGC, according to Reuters.
The IRGC has also confirmed that seven officers, including Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were killed in the airstrike.
Zahedi was a senior commander with the Quds Force – the IRGC unit tasked with operations overseas – and Rahimi was his deputy, RT reports.
Israel has repeatedly hit Iranian targets since the war in Gaza started.
However, officials in Syria and Iran have blamed Israel for the attack. “The Islamic Republic of Iran, while reserving its rights to take countermeasures, decides on the type of reaction and punishment of the aggressor,” Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani,” said in a statement quoted by the IRNA news agency.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s Foreign Minister, warned on X that Israel’s close ally, the US, “must be held accountable.”
Israel on its part has not commented on the strike.
The state had accused Iran of masterminding the deadly October 7 attack on Israeli citizens, which triggered the ongoing war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Last month, the Israel Defense Forces, IDF, struck what it said were Iran-linked militants in Lebanon.
Tehran has pledged to continue its support for Hamas and other Palestinian groups, but insisted that Hamas had independently decided to invade Israeli territory.
