An Iranian Quds Force field commander was assassinated near the Syrian capital, Iranian media reported on Saturday.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency identified the commander as Farhad Dabirian and said he was killed in the south Damascus suburb of Sayeda Zeinab. The area is home to a Shi’ite shrine.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing and Fars provided no additional details on how Dabirian was killed.
The Fars report didn’t say what Dabirian’s role was in Syria but noted he was a commander of the battle to retake the historic town of Palmyra from the Islamic State group.
Iran is an ally of Syria and has offered military advisers and sent militiamen and material support to help Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces in Syria’s nine-year civil war.
U.K.-based monitor group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOAR) on Friday night also reported Dabirian’s death, but did not provide details. It added that the late commander was close to Lebanese Shi’ite terror group Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In recent years, Israel has repeatedly carried out airstrikes in Syria against targets belonging to Iran and its regional proxies.
On Feb. 27, Arab news outlets reported that Israel had assassinated senior Hezbollah operative Imad at-Tawil in Syria, who was in charge of creating an Iranian-backed terrorist network on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
According to SOAR, Tawil was killed when his car was hit from the air by a missile. Russian media said witnesses on the ground saw intense activity by Israeli aircraft nearby.
Another airstrike last month attributed to Israel killed two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, which is backed by Iran.
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
