TEHRAN, Iran: Iran called Monday on the world community to act after Israel attacked on an Iranian consulate in Damascus killing a senior Guards commander and others.
According to a statement by Iran’s foreign ministry, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian Foreign Minister, in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, “blamed the consequences of this action on the Zionist regime and stressed the need for a serious response by the international community to such criminal actions”.
According to the state TV report, 63-year-old Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, “one of the senior commanders” in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “was martyred in an attack by Zionist regime fighters on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s consulate building in Damascus.”
He joined the Guards over four decades ago.
The Iran’s top diplomat described the attack as a violation of all international obligations and conventions, saying that Israeli prime minster Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance owing to what he called the consecutive failures of the Israeli regime in Gaza Strip and not achieving the ambitious goals of the Zionists.
Israel has now been at war with Iran-backed Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip for almost six months.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani, in a separate statement, “strongly condemned” the attack and said that Iran “reserves the right to carry out a reaction and will decide on the type of response and the punishment of the aggressor.”
Earlier, Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador in Damascus, said, that the five-storey consulate building was hit by Israeli F-35 fighter jets and with six missiles.
Iran has vowed a decisive response to the attack which killed at least five people including three military men.
