Mourn for victims of deadly strike on Iran consulate in Damascus

People mourn by the coffins of the Iranian consulate strike victims at Sayyidah Ruqayya shrine in Damascus.

Monday's strike blamed on Israel hit the consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed 13 people, including seven members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media reported.

A deadly strike blamed on Israel against Iran's diplomatic mission in Damascus could trigger a spillover of the Gaza war across the region, an escalation Tehran had sought to avoid, analysts said.

Strike leveled the consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed 13 people, including seven members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media reported.

They included two senior commanders of the Guards' Qud Force foreign operations arm, Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Iranian officials said.

After months of battling Hamas militants in Gaza, Israel is now stepping up its operations against Iranian and pro-Iran commanders in Lebanon and Syria, a move observers fear could spiral into all-out war.

Iran has denied prior knowledge of Palestinian militant group Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

But it is one of Hamas's top supporters and backs a plethora of armed groups that have attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has exchanged near-daily fire with Israel for months.

Although Iran has said it wants to avoid full-scale war, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that "Israel will be punished" for the Damascus strike, while President Ebrahim Raisi said the raid "will not go unanswered".

The Damascus strike could signal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entangled in the Hamas war for nearly six months, is preparing for a wider regional conflict.