The unprecedented strike attributed to Israel, which targeted the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday April 1, left at least 13 dead, including two important Iranian military officials, raising fears of a regional escalation.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran's ideological army, mourned the deaths of seven of its members, including two generals of the Quds Force, which intervenes beyond the borders, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi.

An annex of the Iranian embassy destroyed 

Around 5 p.m. (2 p.m. GMT), a strike targeted the building adjoining the Iranian embassy in the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, home to several embassies and United Nations offices.

In the targeted building, which was completely destroyed, were the consular section and the residence of the Iranian ambassador, Hossein Akbari. The latter emerged unscathed, as did his family, and declared that the building had been targeted by “six missiles fired by Israeli F-35 fighters”.

Official Syrian media, for their part, claimed that the raid was carried out by "the Israeli enemy from the occupied Golan Heights."

The strikes are the first to target an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria, a country in civil war since 2011, and where Iran and its allies support President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel, which has carried out hundreds of raids in Syria, as usual refrained from confirming this strike.

The death toll

Iranian state television announced on Tuesday that the death toll had risen to 13, seven Iranians and six Syrians.

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in the United Kingdom but which has a vast network of sources in the country, reported 14 deaths in total: eight Iranians , five Syrians who are members of pro-Iranian groups and one Lebanese, all fighters.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, announced that seven of its members had been killed.

Among them are Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, two commanders of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Guards which intervenes abroad. According to the OSDH, General Zahedi was the “commander of the Al-Quds force for Syria, Lebanon and Palestine”.

On Tuesday, Lebanese Hezbollah announced the death of one of its members, killed, according to a source close to the party, in the Damascus strike.

Rescuers removed the body of a woman aged around 50 from the rubble, a Civil Defense source told AFP.

The regional context

This strike comes in the context of the war that has been going on for almost six months between Israel and Palestinian Hamas in Gaza. The war was sparked by a surprise attack by Islamist Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7.

Since then, pro-Iranian groups in the region, from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, have carried out attacks against Israeli and American targets to support their ally, Hamas.

Israel, for its part, has intensified its strikes against positions of the Syrian army but especially pro-Iranian groups, such as Hezbollah, and Iranian military targets in Syria.

At the end of December, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, a key commander of the Quds Force, was killed in a missile strike south of Damascus.

Tehran denies sending troops to fight in Syria, saying its presence there is limited to that of military advisers.

The reactions 

Iran warned Israel and the United States on Tuesday that it would retaliate for the raid. “This cowardly crime will not go unanswered,” said President Ebrahim Raïssi. Israel "will be punished" by Iran, warned Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The raid came a few days before Jerusalem Day. This annual day of mobilization decreed by Tehran, and which will be held on Friday, is an opportunity for intense mobilization of its allies in the region.

The Syrian government denounced the strike, as did Hezbollah, which affirmed that the raid “would not go unpunished”. Hamas, for its part, “stigmatized Zionist aggression.”

Read alsoSouth Lebanon: faced with Israeli escalation, Hezbollah is playing for time

Russia, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, alongside Iran, said the strike on Damascus was "unacceptable" and called for a meeting of the UN Security Council which should be held on Tuesday in 7 p.m. GMT.

China, another permanent member of the Security Council, also denounced the strike. This attack also irritated Saudi Arabia, a regional heavyweight, and even the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf country which has developed its relations with Israel since the normalization of these ties in 2020.

For their part, the United States indicated to Iran that they "were not involved" in the raid, according to an American official cited by the Axios site.

The European Union, for its part, called for “restraint”. "In this extremely tense regional situation, it is truly of the utmost importance to exercise restraint because further escalation in the region is in no one's interest," said Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of the EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell.

With AFP

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