Beirut (AP): An Israeli airstrike on Monday in a Damascus neighbourhood killed a high-ranking Iranian general, Iranian state media said.
The killing of Razi Mousavi, a long-time adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, comes as clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border between Hezbollah and Israel continue to intensify with fears of the Israel-Hamas war sparking a regional spillover with Iran-backed groups. The Israeli strikes killed two other generals earlier this month in Syria.
Israel struck the Sayida Zeinab neighbourhood, located near a Shiite Muslim shrine, Iran's official news agency IRNA and Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. IRNA described Mousavi as a close companion of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force who was slain in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
Neither the Israeli military nor Syrian state media immediately issued a statement about the attack.
Though IRNA didn't provide other details about the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli military targeted Mousavi after he entered a farm in the area, which allegedly was one of several offices for Hezbollah. The Lebanese group, alongside Iran and Russia, has played a key military role in keeping President Bashar Assad's government in power throughout the Syrian conflict.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.
It doesn't usually acknowledge its airstrikes on Syria. But when it does, it says it's targeting Iranian-backed groups there that have backed Assad's government.
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Thrissur (Kerala) (PTI): At least five people, including two children, were killed and as many persons injured when a truck ploughed into the roadside tent where they were sleeping in this central Kerala district early on Tuesday, police said.
The victims, nomads living in tents set up along the highway, were struck by the truck on a national highway in Nattika, under the Valapad police station limits, at 4.30 am, they said.
The injured have been admitted to Thrissur Government Medical College Hospital, with the condition of two individuals reported as serious, police said.
Among the deceased are two children, aged one-and-a-half and four years. Two women were also killed.
The driver and cleaner of the vehicle have been taken into custody, police added.