Tehran:

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said on Saturday that Israel is worried about possible retaliation by Iran after an attack in Syria that killed members of its Revolutionary Guards.

“It’s been a week that the Zionists are in complete panic and on alert,” Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

“They don’t know what Iran wants to do, so they and their supporters are scared,” ISNA quoted him as saying.

Tehran has blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate for an April 1 airstrike in Damascus that leveled the Iranian embassy’s consular annex, along with two generals from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Seven members of the (IRGC) were killed.

After the attack, which Israel did not comment on, its military announced the suspension of the holiday. He also said that the authorities decided to increase manpower and drafted reservists to man the air defense.

Safavi added, “This psychological, media and political war is more terrifying for them than the war itself, because they are expecting an attack every night and many of them have fled to shelters.” “

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 16 people were killed in the April 1 attack. Among the dead are General Mohammad Reza Zahidi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, senior commanders of the IRGC’s foreign operations arm Quds Force.

Zahidi, 63, was the most senior Iranian soldier killed in a 2020 US missile attack on Baghdad airport after Quds Force chief General Qassem Soleimani was killed.

The strike in Damascus comes against the backdrop of the Gaza war, which began with Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians.

Tehran supports Hamas but denies direct involvement in the attack, which has sparked a sustained bombardment and ground offensive as Israel vows to destroy Hamas.

In the Hamas-run Palestinian Territory, the health ministry says at least 33,686 people have been killed there during the six-month war.

Iran does not recognize Israel and the two countries have been fighting a shadow war for years.

The Islamic Republic of Israel accuses Israel of carrying out a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear program.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)