Hussein Hamedani: Iranian Revolutionary Commander Killed In Syria

Russian General Staff deputy chief Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev said Russian warplanes conducted 67 sorties over the past day – a significant increase over previous days.

Iran also backs Russia’s airstrikes and is reported to have given Russian fighter jets access to its airspace.

A video grab allegedly shows a Russian Su-24M dropping bombs during an airstrike in Syria on October … Since 2011, Hamedani has been subjected to global sanctions for violating human rights.

“One sign of how constrained the capabilities of these groups are is that their threats to stage attacks during the Sochi Olympic Games essentially failed to materialise”, said Saradzhyan, an expert on post-Soviet states. HRW said it is still investigating the two attacks.

The jihadists are now just over 10 kilometres (six mile) from the northern edges of Aleppo city, edging closer to the front line where pro-regime forces are positioned, including the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone.

The areas were seized from hard-line and mainstream rebel groups, including the ultra-conservative Ahrar al-Sham and the Levantine Front. Iranian military officials have lauded Hamedani in the past for his zealotry and unflinching conviction about Islam and 1979 Islamic revolution of Iran.

There is disagreement among Russia’s Islamists about whether they should target civilians, and in any case their capacity to stage attacks has waned in the past few years, said Simon Saradzhyan, a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

Tasnim, an Iranian news agency affiliated to the guards, said Hamedani was operating in “an advisory capacity” when “takfiri terrorists” killed him but it did not disclose the exact details surrounding his death.

The Syrian Observatory also reported a new wave of Russian air strikes on Friday morning in Hama and Idlib provinces, apparently in support of a ground offensive launched this week by Syrian troops and allied militia against rebels.

According to the Observatory, 14 IS jihadists were killed in the raids, which had struck “a training camp” on the southern edges of Raqa city. Syrian troops launched an offensive last week in an attempt to break the siege.

General Hamadani was a member of the Al-Quds Forces, the elite unit of the GRI and orchestrated, as commander of Greater Tehran, the repression of demonstrations of the Iranian opposition in 2009-2010. However, it did not confirm whether the official was Hossein Hamedani or not.

At a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation defense ministers at its headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg decried a “troubling escalation” by Russian forces in Syria and the use of “some of their most modern weapons” near NATO’s borders. It has backed his embattled government for years, stepping up its support since Syria’s brutal civil war began four years ago.

Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has done much of the fighting to prop up Assad’s army, though the commander of the Revolutionary Guards foreign wing, Qassem Soleimani, is said to be heavily involved in strategic planning.