Official media: An Israeli air strike destroys the Iranian consulate in Syria

Syrian authorities said that an Israeli raid destroyed the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing and wounding a number of people.

Iranian state media reported that a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was among those killed.

The pictures showed smoke and dust rising from the multi-storey building next to the Iranian embassy on a highway in the western Mezzeh neighborhood.

The Israeli military said it does not comment on foreign media reports.

The Syrian Ministry of Defense said that Israeli aircraft targeted the consulate building from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights at around 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT).

The ministry added that the Syrian air defenses shot down some of the missiles it fired, but other missiles penetrated them and “completely destroyed the building, killing and wounding everyone inside.”

The ministry said that work is underway to recover the bodies and rescue the wounded from under the rubble, without giving any information about their identities.

Iranian state television reported that among the dead was Brigadier General Zahedi, whom it described as a senior commander in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guard. State television said a number of diplomats were among the dead.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the 63-year-old was a “Quds Force operative” from 2008 to 2016 and served as commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria, reported that eight people were killed – a high-ranking Quds Force commander, two Iranian advisers and five members of the Revolutionary Guard. .

Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on Iran-linked targets in Syria in the past few years, but it rarely acknowledges these strikes.