DUBAI, April 2. /TASS/. The Israeli Air Force strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus will not remain unanswered, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has said.
"After repeated defeats and failures the Zionist regime has put blind assassinations on its agenda, but it should know that it will never achieve its sinister goals with such inhumane measures, and this cowardly crime will not go unanswered," Raisi said in a statement published on the presidential website.
The Iranian president condemned "this inhumane attack, which is a clear violation of international regulations." Raisi noted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, elite military units) generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji-Rahimi, who were killed in the strike, were in Damascus as senior military advisers and now "proudly joined the caravan of martyrs." The president also offered condolences to the families of those killed in the attack.
On April 1, the SANA news agency reported that the Israeli Air Force hit a house in Damascus. Later, Iranian media reported that the Iranian consulate building located on Mezzeh Avenue in the west of the Syrian capital was shelled. The IRGC's public relations office reported the deaths of seven military advisers, generals Zahedi and Haji-Rahimi and five other officers. According to Iranian state TV channel IRIB, Zahedi commanded the IRGC's Al-Quds Special Forces units in Lebanon and Syria.
The Russian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack on the Iranian consular office in Syria and said that "such aggressive Israeli actions are absolutely unacceptable and must be stopped."