Iran's revolutionary guards say adviser killed in Israeli attack on Syria

TEHRAN - Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that one of their military advisers was killed in an Israeli attack on the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday, Iranian media reported.

"The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has announced the martyrdom of guardsman Milad Haydari, one of the IRGC's military advisers and officers, in the criminal attack of the Zionist regime on the outskirts of Damascus at dawn today," the media quoted an IRGC statement. 

Israel has for years been carrying out attacks against what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that began in 2011.

Iranian-backed groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Iraqi paramilitary groups have entrenched positions around the capital and in the country's north, east and south.

The new attack follows a strike overnight on Thursday that left two soldiers wounded, according to state media. A source with Syria's opposition factions said the strike on Thursday hit a car carrying pro-Iran personnel near a Syrian security building.

Iran "strongly condemned the Thursday and Friday morning attacks of the aggressor Zionist regime on some centers in Damascus and its suburbs," foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in an online statement on Friday.