Colonel Davoud Jafari, affiliated with IRGC Aerospace Force, was said to have been killed in a roadside bombing near Damascus.
A top Iranian military officer and missile expert was killed by a roadside bombing near Damascus, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp said on Wednesday morning.
The IRGC claimed that Israel was behind the explosion, saying that it will respond to the attack. The statement said the “criminal and fake” Zionist regime would suffer a response for the “atrocity”.
The officer was identified as Colonel Davoud Jafari who had served as an adviser of the IRGC Aerospace Force in Syria, according to the Tasnim News Agency.
Israel’s alleged operations
Iranian officers and military forces have been stationed in Syria for a number of years. Initially, Iran sent forces there to assist Bashar al-Assad in quelling the uprising against his regime but the Iranian troops have remained as part of an IRGC effort to establish bases from which they can threaten and attack Israel.
As a result, Israel repeatedly strikes the Iranian entrenchment in Syria, although in most cases does not take responsibility. On November 8, for example, 25 Iranian-backed militants were reportedly killed and 10 others were wounded, in an attack that Lebanese media claimed Israel committed. The attack targeted Iranian fuel shipments headed to Lebanon.
The IDF has been engaging in a continued campaign to disrupt Iran’s activities in Syria, in what some army officials have defined as the war-between-the-wars strategy. The campaign aims to disrupt Iran’s aspirations of regional hegemony, as well as to prevent Tehran from placing its proxies within Syria.
Content retrieved from: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-723134.