On Friday, December 29, Saudi media reported that 11 commanders and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed in an Israeli strike on Damascus airport on Thursday night.
Citing unnamed sources, Al-Hadath and Al-Arabiya added that the IRGC commanders and affiliated paramilitary groups supported by the Iranian regime were waiting to receive a “high-level delegation” during the attack.
According to these reports, one of those killed in the attack was Nourat Rashid, a commander of the paramilitary groups affiliated with the Iranian regime in eastern Syria.
The Saudi media outlets did not disclose the identities of the killed commanders and members of the IRGC during this attack.
However, according to Fars News Agency, run by the IRGC, Ramazan Sharif, the spokesperson of the IRGC, denied the news of 11 IRGC members being killed in the bombing of Damascus airport.
Meanwhile, Syrian information and military sources announced on Friday that Israel targeted the main air defense base of the country on the evening of Thursday, December 28. This was the latest attack of its kind since the October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said this was the 73rd Israeli attack on Syria during the current calendar year, but it did not mention the number or possible identities of the casualties resulting from it.
In recent years, numerous attacks have been carried out against the IRGC and Iranian regime-affiliated paramilitary groups in Syria, attributed to Israel. However, Israel rarely claims responsibility for these attacks.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Naftali Bennett, the former Prime Minister of Israel, revealed that during his tenure, he had ordered the Israeli forces to attack Iran twice.
The attack attributed to Israel on Thursday evening took place three days after another deadly attack on the outskirts of Damascus, in which “Seyyed Razi Mousavi, also known as Seyyed Razi, a seasoned advisor of the IRGC in Syria” was killed.
Israeli media referred to Seyyed Razi Musavi as the “highest-ranking member of the IRGC after Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a targeted attack.”
A day after the killing of this senior IRGC member in Syria, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister, stated that his country had responded to attacks against it “in Iraq, Yemen, and Iran.”
On the same day, the Persian-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), while refraining from confirming or denying Israel’s involvement in the killing of Razi Mousavi, announced that any attack on Israel’s borders would be met with a decisive response from the IDF.
