An officer in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been killed in an Israeli attack in Syria, the force says, amid an apparent intensifying Israeli effort to counter the Islamic Republic’s foothold in the war-wracked country.
In a statement reported by Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated to the IRGC, one of the force’s military advisers and officers was killed in the "criminal attack" on the outskirts of Damascus at dawn on March 31.
The IRGC threatened to avenge the death of the officer. The man was identified as Milad Haydari, but his rank was not given.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which usually declines to comment on reports of strikes in Syria.
Syrian state media reported that Israel fired "sprays of missiles" just after midnight that hit a site outside Damascus."
The report quoted a military source as saying that the attack caused some material damage. It did not give details about casualties.
A UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the air strike was the sixth attack by Israel in Syria this month.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria in recent years targeting Iranian forces, Syrian government positions and allied militias.
Dozens of IRGC members have been killed in Syria during the country’s 12-year civil war, in which Tehran and Moscow are backing President Bashar al-Assad.
Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups have positions around the capital and in Syria's north, east and south.
The March 31 overnight attack caps a month of intense air strikes on Syria.
In the north, an Israeli strike reportedly hit an Iranian arms depot near Aleppo's airport on March 22.
Iran-backed groups then launched armed drones at a base hosting US forces in the northeast, killing one American contractor and wounding another, as well as several service members.
The United States said it responded with air strikes on installations affiliated with the IRGC in eastern Syria.
The United States said six of its soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries during the exchanges.
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