A colonel in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed by an improvised bomb near the Syrian capital Damascus, Iranian media reported Wednesday, blaming arch foe Israel.
"Colonel Davoud Jafari, one of Iran's military advisers in Syria and a member of the Guards' aerospace arm, was killed with a makeshift bomb planted by the roadside," the Tasnim news agency reported, citing a statement from the Guards.
It said Jafari was killed on Monday "by associates of the Zionist regime" -- its term for Israel, a country with which Iran has waged a shadow war of attacks, assassinations and acts of sabotage.
Iran has long backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government in the country's grinding civil war. Assad is also backed by the military wing of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah as well as by Russian forces.
Iran says it has no troops in Syria but IRGC military "advisers". The Tasnim report vowed that "undoubtedly, the criminal Zionist regime will receive the adequate response for this crime". Israel has reportedly carried out multiple strikes in Syria in recent months.
They include one that killed five government troops in Damascus, and two that caused significant damage to the airport in the second city of Aleppo. In March, the Guards announced the deaths of two high-ranking officers killed in an Israeli attack in Syria, threatening to retaliate to avenge them.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years but rarely comments on its military actions in Syria.
But it has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of air and missile strikes in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011, targeting both government positions and Iran-backed forces.
Published 23 November 2022, 09:08 IST