Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.
| Photo Credit: MEA Briefing

India is concerned by the Israeli attack on the Iranian diplomatic premises in Syria on April 1, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on April 4. “Distressed at the escalating tensions in West Asia and their potential to fuel further violence and instability”, New Delhi has urged all parties to avoid actions that go against “commonly accepted principles and norms of International Law”, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in his weekly media briefing.

Israel strikes Iranian embassy, Iran vows retaliation

Israeli air strikes destroyed the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Syria on April 1, killing and wounding everyone inside, Damascus said as Iranian state TV reported a Revolutionary Guards commander among the dead.

Britain-based war monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight people, including several Guards members, were killed when “Israeli missiles… destroyed the building of an annex to the Iranian embassy”.

Iranian state TV said among those killed was a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

Also read: A new low: On Israel’s Gaza war and the U.S. response

Iran and one of its key proxies on April 2 vowed to respond to the Israeli attack. Israel has repeatedly targeted military officials from Iran, which supports militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza, and along its border with Lebanon. Monday’s strike in Damascus signaled an escalation because it struck an Iranian diplomatic mission.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said Tuesday that Iran relayed an important message to the United States late Monday and that it called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The message to Washington was delivered through a Swiss envoy in Tehran; Switzerland looks after U.S. interests in Iran.

(with inputs from agencies)

Tehran:

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday condemned a deadly air strike blamed on Israel against his country’s consular annex in Damascus, saying the “cowardly crime will not go unanswered”.

“After repeated defeats and failures against the faith and will of the Resistance Front fighters, the Zionist regime has put blind assassinations on its agenda in the struggle to save itself,” Raisi said on his office’s website.

“Day by day, we have witnessed the strengthening of the Resistance Front and the disgust and hatred of free nations towards the illegitimate nature of (Israel). This cowardly crime will not go unanswered.”

The air strike on the Iranian embassy’s five-storey annex killed seven members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, which runs Iran’s overseas military operations.

Among the dead, were Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, both senior commanders in the Quds Force, Guards’ foreign operations arm.

Zahedi, 63, had held a succession of commands in the force in a Guards career spanning more than four decades.

Israel declined to comment on the strike.

The UN Security Council was to discuss the deadly strike later Tuesday at a meeting requested by Syrian ally Russia.

“Iran reserves its legitimate and inherent right under international law and the United Nations Charter to take a decisive response to such reprehensible acts,” Iran’s mission to the world body said.

It warned the strike could “potentially ignite more conflict involving other nations” and called on the Security Council “to condemn this unjustified criminal act.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Tehran:

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called Monday on the international community to act after the Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus killed a senior Guards commander and others.

Amir-Abdollahian, in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, “blamed the consequences of this action on the Zionist regime and stressed the need for a serious response by the international community to such criminal actions”, according to a statement by Iran’s foreign ministry.

State TV reported that Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, “one of the senior commanders” in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “was martyred in an attack by Zionist regime fighters on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s consulate building in Damascus.”

The 63-year-old joined the Guards more than four decades ago and has held various senior positions.

Amir-Abdollahian described the attack as a violation of all international obligations and conventions.

“Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to the consecutive failures of the Israeli regime in Gaza and not achieving the ambitious goals of the Zionists,” Iran’s top diplomat added.

He was referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country has been at war with Iran-backed Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip for almost six months.

In a separate statement, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani “strongly condemned” the attack and said that Iran “reserves the right to carry out a reaction and will decide on the type of response and the punishment of the aggressor.”

Earlier, Iran’s ambassador in Damascus, Hossein Akbari, said, “the five-storey consulate building was attacked by Israeli F-35 fighter jets and with six missiles.” He did not give the source of his information about the aircraft.

Akbari vowed a “decisive response” as the attack killed “at least five people including three military personnel.”

In a night-time rally held in Palestine Square in central Tehran on Monday, hundreds of demonstrators, waving flags of Iran and Palestine, called for “revenge” and chanted slogans of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

They also burned Israeli and United States flags, according to AFP journalists at the scene.

Iran hailed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, as a “success” but denied any direct involvement.

Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen have since carried out a series of attacks on Israeli and Western targets.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Hezbollah fighter stands in front of anti-tank artillery at Juroud Arsal, the Syria-Lebanon border. File photo
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Israeli airstrikes early Friday, March 29, 2024, near the northern city of Aleppo have killed 36 soldiers and six Hezbollah fighters, a war monitor said.

Syrian state media quoted an unnamed military official as saying that the Israeli strikes coincided with drone attacks by Syrian insurgent groups on civilians targets in Aleppo and its suburbs. It did not give an exact numbers for the casualties.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Israeli strikes hit missile depots for Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group in Aleppo’s southern suburb of Jibreen near the Aleppo International Airport. It added that dozens of soldiers were killed or wounded in the strikes.

The Observatory said explosions were still heard two hours after the strikes.

There was no immediate statement from Israeli officials on the strikes. Israel frequently launches strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria but rarely acknowledges them.

On Thursday, Syrian state media reported airstrikes near the capital Damascus saying it wounded two civilians.

Hezbollah has had an armed presence in Syria since it joined the country’s conflict fighting alongside government forces.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial centre, has come under such attacks in the past that led to the closure of its international airport. Friday’s strike did not affect the airport.

The strikes have escalated over the past five months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.

(Inputs from PTI and AFP)