Iranian General Is Killed in Syria Advising Military

TEHRAN — A prominent Iranian general was killed in Syria Thursday night, Iranian officials and state media reported on Friday. His death illustrated both the level of Iran’s direct involvement on the government side in the Syrian civil war, and the pervasive violence of the conflict.

The general, Hussein Hamedani, a senior figure in the Revolutionary Guards, was killed in Aleppo Province, where he was advising the Syrian military, the reports said. The Iranian state news outlet Press TV reported, citing a statement by the Revolutionary Guards, that General Hamedani had been killed by Islamic State fighters, but did not say how he died.

The general’s death prompted an outpouring of grief from Iran’s leaders, who have been steadily sending high-ranking military figures to Syria. In a public message of condolence, President Hassan Rouhani praised General Hamedani as a “martyr” and said his death was a “big loss.” Mohammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, issued a similar message.

Esmail Kowsari, a member of Parliament, told the Tasnim news agency that the general “prevented the fall of Syria and the victory of the Daesh and other hostile forces,” referring to the Islamic State by an Arabic acronym for the group.

General Hamedani was a top commander during the Iran-Iraq war, and led the crackdown against antigovernment protests that erupted after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was the target of international sanctions. The state news agency IRNA reported that a public memorial ceremony for the general would be held on Sunday.

Iran has been providing an economic lifeline and intensive military assistance to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose forces have been locked in a protracted civil war in which more than 250,000 people have died and millions more have been driven from their homes or fled the country.

Iranian advisers have been aiding the Syrian government on a number of fronts. They have helped train tens of thousands of fighters in a new pro-government militia called the National Defense Forces; they have provided strategic, tactical and political advice; and they have taken important roles in key negotiations, including a deal last year to evacuate rebels from the besieged Old City section of Homs. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia closely allied with Iran, has also fought pivotal battles on the side of the government.

Another prominent Revolutionary Guards officer, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, was killed in Syria in January, after reportedly taking part in a mission along with 12 other fighters close to the border with Israel.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with extensive contacts in Syria, said General Hamedani was killed along with several bodyguards on Thursday near the Kweiris military airport east of Aleppo. Aircraft based there are often used to bomb Al Bab, a city held by Islamic State militants.

The battle lines in and around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, are complicated, with control contested among government forces and rival insurgent groups. On the city’s outskirts there are some battle lines where the fighters of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, are battling the government, and others where they are fighting other rebel groups.

Despite airstrikes against the Islamic State by the American-led coalition and the Russians, its fighters have been gaining ground from rival insurgents northeast of Aleppo. They seized four villages and an infantry-school building on Friday after hitting their rivals’ positions with car bombs, according to antigovernment activists. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in social media postings, calling the rival insurgents infidels.

One of the car bombings killed Saleh Mahmoud Leyla, a Syrian journalist working for Turkey’s state-run news agency, Anadolu, according to the agency. Mr. Leyla, who had also been an antigovernment activist, frequently covered news developments in insurgent-held areas of Syria. Dozens of Syrian journalists have lost their lives in the conflict.

Some antigovernment activists have accused Mr. Assad’s ally, Russia, of strengthening the Islamic State by mounting airstrikes in recent days against an anti-ISIS rebel group called Suqour al-Jabal, or Falcons of the Mountain. Mr. Assad and the Russians have called all of the government’s opponents terrorists and have brushed aside any distinctions among them.

The Islamic State advance in Aleppo Province has squeezed rival insurgents between its fighters and the government’s lines, forcing them to flee.
Correction: October 9, 2015

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to claims of responsibility by the Islamic State. They were for car-bomb attacks on rival insurgents near Aleppo, not for the death of Gen. Hussein Hamedani.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/middleeast/hussein-hamedani-iran-general-killed-in-syria.html?_r=0