TEHRAN: A general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been killed while “on a mission” in Syria, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
“General Abolfazl Alijani, a member of the IRGC’s ground forces who was on a mission in Syria as a military adviser, was martyred on Sunday,” the state broadcaster said on its website.
It described Alijani as a “defender of the sanctuary,” a term used for those who work on behalf of Iran in Syria or Iraq, without providing more details of the attack in which he was killed.
Iran says it has deployed its forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus and only as advisers.
In early August, funeral processions were held in Tehran and other Iranian cities for five IRGC members killed in Syria several years ago, after their bodies were recovered and identified through DNA testing, Iranian media reported.
Back in March, the Guards said that an Israeli attack in Syria killed two of its officers, warning that Israel “will pay for the crime.”
Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes inside Syria in recent years, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and fighters of Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, it has acknowledged mounting hundreds of them since 2011.
The Israeli military has defended them as necessary to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
Iran and Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war, with the Islamic republic accusing its “sworn-enemy” of carrying out sabotage attacks against its nuclear sites and assassinations of key figures, including scientists.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is the ideological arm of the Iranian military and is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the United States.
Iran Guards general killed in Syria: state media
https://arab.news/5nkpn
Iran Guards general killed in Syria: state media
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
