IRGC intellgince chief in Syria Hojjatollah Omidvar. Via X.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that four of its “military advisers” have been killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Syrian capital, Damascus, on January 20 morning.
The airstrike hit a multi-store building in al-Mazzeh Western Villas, a highly-secured upscale neighborhood in western Damascus that is the home to the United Nations headquarters in Syria and several embassies.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency quoted a military official as saying that air defenses had managed to stop some of the missiles, but that the airstrike -which was launched from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights- killed and wounded some civilians. Buildings were also destroyed, it said.
In a brief statement, the IRGC said that the Israeli airstrike killed “a number of Syrian forces and four military advisers.” It later identified the people killed as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi and Saied Karimi, without sharing their ranks.
Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that the IRGC’s Syria intelligence chief and his deputy were among those killed in the airstrike.
The intelligence chief is Omidvar, according to several sources, who said that he was also known as “Haj Sadegh” and “Yousef Omidzadeh.” He was responsible for collecting information and planning attacks against U.S. forces in Syria, according to a Washington Post report from last year.
In a statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Tehran “retains the right to respond to the terrorism of the Zionist entity at the right time and place.”
Israel has not commented on the airstrike, yet. For years it has carried out attacks against IRGC targets in Syria without claiming responsibility.
Such strikes have intensified since the war in the Gaza Strip broke out following the October 7 Palestinian surprise attack on Israel.
On December 2, two officers of the IRGC were killed in the town of Set Zaynab to the south of Damascus in a strike that was blamed on Israel. Another attack that targeted the Shia town on December 25 claimed the life of Quds Force senior commander Brigade General Seyed Razi Mousavi. Israel was also held responsible by both Iran and Syria.
The new alleged Israeli attack on the IRGC in Syria came a few days after Iran fired missiles at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighborhood close to the sprawling United States Consulate compound in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern autonomous region of Kurdistan.
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