Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps yesterday said one of its colonels has died of wounds suffered in an air strike it blamed on the US-led coalition in Syria.
Ahmadreza Afshari of the IRGC’s “aerospace advisory forces” in Syria was “martyred because of injuries caused by aerial bombardment”, Guards’ chief Hossein Salami said in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.
The colonel was transferred from Syria to Iran for treatment following the air strike, the statement said, indicating the incident occurred two to three weeks ago.
In late July, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said an air strike killed three pro-Iran fighters in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, where Iran wields significant influence.
The area is regularly targeted by Israel and sometimes by the United States. Responsibility for the strike was not immediately claimed.
A spokesman for the US-led military coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State jihadist group said at the time that “neither the coalition nor US forces carried out overnight strikes in Deir Ezzor”.
