Syria: High-ranking vacationer killed
An official statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that yesterday one of the commanders of this elite unit, General Hossein Hamedani, was killed in the Aleppo area.
Aleppo is the first largest city in Syria, for which, since 2012, government troops, Kurdish militias, and militants of various Islamist groups, including IS, have been stubbornly fighting.
The situation in the Aleppo region as of today. Red indicates the zones of control of government troops and militias, green - “moderate” Islamists, yellow - Kurdish militias, black - excessive Islamists from the Islamic State.
The deceased sixty-year-old general has a rich track record: participation in the suppression of an uprising in Iranian Kurdistan in 1979, in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–1988, suppression of protests after the presidential elections in Iran in 2009–2010, after which he found himself in sanctions lists of Western countries, and now - Syria, where he gave his last fight.
Just a week ago, Reuters, citing its own sources, reported the arrival of hundreds of Iranian troops in northern Syria at the end of September to take action against the Islamists entrenched there.
Today, the BBC, citing Iranian state media, reported that ISIS militants achieved operational success north of Aleppo, capturing three small settlements that were previously in the hands of another anti-government group. Also, the outskirts of Aleppo have been hit by Russian aircraft several times in recent days.
The video shows an attack on a militant fuel and lubricants warehouse in the Khan El-Aasal region south of Aleppo. A fountain of burning fuel erupts from a damaged underground tank.
General Hamedani is far from the first senior Iranian military officer to be wounded or killed in the war against IS and other terrorist groups.
Recent examples include the death of General Hamid Taghavi in Iraq in December 2014 and the suicide attack on the commander of the famous Al-Quds Brigade (Jerusalem) Qassem Soleimani in January of this year.
At first, Iran preferred to deny the presence of its military personnel in Syria, declaring if they were identified that they ended up in the country privately when they decided to go there on their own vacation to worship Shiite holy places.
In January 2012, Major Mohamed Tork was killed in Damascus. The official version is an accident. A year later, Iranian General Hassan Shateri was killed. According to the official version, he died at the hands of Mossad agents in Lebanon, where he was carrying out a peace mission related to the restoration of the country.
However, the Free Syrian Army released a statement that a high-ranking Iranian military officer was indeed killed by the Israelis, but not in Lebanon, but in Syria, as a result of the then-high-profile air raid on the Jamraya military research center in Damascus province.
When it became impossible to deny all new similar facts, the Iranian military were declared “military advisers” who, without directly participating in the battles, help the Syrian army fight the enemy with their advice. This is exactly how the official statement of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described the purpose for which General Hamedani found himself in the zone of intense hostilities.
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