Iran Holds Funeral For IRGC Officers Killed In Damascus Consulate Strike
Iran held a funeral on Friday for seven Revolutionary Guards killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this week.
Iran held a funeral on Friday for seven Revolutionary Guards killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this week.
State broadcaster showed demonstrators carrying pictures of those killed and banners with slogans such as "Death to Israel" and "Death to America".
The funeral coincided with the annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day, during which Iran stages large state-sponsored pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel rallies nationwide.
Among those killed in Monday's airstrike on the Iranian embassy compound in the Syrian capital Damascus was one of Iran's top soldiers, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, the extraterritorial wing of the IRGC.
It was the boldest, and deadliest, in a series of attacks that have killed Iranian officials in Syria since December. According to The Financial Times, suspected Israeli strikes have claimed the lives of 18 IRGC commanders and advisers since the Gaza war broke out on October 7.
Iran vowed harsh retaliation, raising the specter of a wider war and prompting the Israeli armed forces to suspend leave for all combat units on Thursday, a day after they said they were mobilizing more troops for air defense units.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday his country would harm "whoever harms us or plans to harm us".
The coffins of two of the killed officers were displayed in the capital, Tehran, to religious mourning chants. Some of those present waved the Palestinian flag. All seven officers were expected to be buried later on Friday.
Iran's Jerusalem Day rallies are held annually on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in support of Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state in territories captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
