Israel says it has killed a senior Iranian commander who helped plan Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in a strike on Saturday on the city of Qom.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the killing of Saeed Izadi marked a key point in the conflict. He was “one of the orchestrators” of the attack, which killed about 1,200 people and saw many others taken to Gaza as hostages, said IDF chief Eyal Zamir.
“The blood of thousands of Israelis is on his hands,” he said on Saturday, calling it a “tremendous intelligence and operational achievement.”
Iran is yet to confirm Izadi’s killing and has previously denied involvement in Hamas’s attack.
The IDF said it had killed Izadi in a strike on an apartment in Qom, south of Tehran, in the early hours of Saturday. He had been in charge of the Palestine Corps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’s (IRGC) Quds Force, responsible for handling ties with the Palestinian armed groups.
He was reportedly instrumental in arming and financing Hamas, and had been responsible for military co-ordination between senior IRGC commanders and Hamas leaders, the IDF said.
In April 2024, Izadi narrowly survived an Israeli air strike targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria – an attack that killed several high-ranking Quds Force commanders.
Israel later on Saturday also claimed to have killed another Quds Force commander, Behnam Shahriyari in a drone strike as he was travelling in a car through western Iran.
Shahriyari had been responsible for transporting missiles and rockets to Iran’s proxy groups across the region, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, said the IDF.
If Israeli claims are confirmed, the assassinations of Izadi and Shahryari represent a major blow to the IRGC.
The attacks come as the conflict between the two countries entered its ninth day, with both launching new attacks on Saturday.
Iran said Israel had targeted a nuclear facility near the city of Isfahan. Israel said it was targeting military infrastructure in south-west Iran and reported at least one impact from Iranian drones that entered its airspace.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meanwhile told reporters in Istanbul that any US involvement in the conflict would be “very very dangerous”. On Friday he told European envoys in Geneva on Friday that Iran would not resume talks over its nuclear programme until Israel’s strikes stopped.
Donald Trump has suggested US involvement in Israel’s strikes on Iran, saying Tehran had a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes if they did not negotiate on their nuclear programme.
Iranian officials say least 430 people, including military commanders, have been killed and 3,500 injured in Iran since the conflict began on 13 June. A human rights group tracking Iran, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, put the unofficial death toll at 657 on Friday.
In Israel, officials say 25 people have been killed including one of a heart attack.
By BBC News
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