Brussels 01.04.2024 UPDATE 18:52 *Iranian media also reported that the strikes in Damascus completely destroyed the annex building, and that the ambassador was unharmed.

**AFP correspondents at the site confirmed the building next to the embassy, an annex, had been levelled, in an upscale neighbourhood of Damascus.

Today Israeli warplanes struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus,  Syria, and a Lebanese security source told journalists that a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, had been killed in the attack. (Image above: Damascus)

The reporters at the scene in the Mezzeh district of the capital saw smoke rising from rubble of a building that had been flattened, and emergency vehicles parked outside.

Syrian state television confirmed the Consulate building had been attacked, but a spokesperson of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media.”
Earlier, Iranian media released a report stating that a building close to the Embassy had been hit, and Iran’s student news agency reported that the target was the consulate and ambassador’s residence.

Since the Iranian-backed Palestinian faction Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, Israel has increased airstrikes in Syria against Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), both of which support the government of President Bashar al-Assad.