The military wing of the Hamas Movement on October 7 launched a massive air, ground, and sea offensive and penetrated into Israeli territory, triggering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration the following day that they were “embarking on a long and difficult war.”
Ramazan Sharif, IRGC spokesperson, told reporters on Wednesday that the Hamas attack, code-named Operation al-Aqsa Flood, was carried out in retaliation for the death of Soleimani.
“Al-Aqsa Flood is one of the retaliatory actions of the resistance front in Israel against the martyrdom of Qasem Soleimani. The Zionists lost more than 200 commanders in the al-Aqsa Flood and a total of 1,500 [people] were killed. This number means destruction for a regime that claims to be militarily undefeatable,” said Sharif.
Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the IRGC, was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020.
The October 7 attack marks the bloodiest escalation of the longstanding Israel-Palestine conflict in decades, fifty years since the Yom Kippur war.
Hamas has called on “resistance fighters” in Arab countries to join its campaign against Israel while the US has reiterated its support for Israel.
Tasnim news agency, a semi-official media outlet, reported that Seyyed Razi Mousavi, a top commander of the IRGC and “one of the IRGC’s senior advisors in Syria” was killed by Israeli air forces in the outskirts of Damascus.
The agency also reported that he was one of the “companions” of Soleimani.
Israel’s defense ministry has yet to confirm its involvement in the attack.
The commander was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Tehran and Damascus, according to Reuters.
The IRGC spokesperson said the assassination of Mousavi was a response to Israel’s “defeats” in the battle against Hamas.
“Iran’s response will be a combination of a direct step and a step by the resistance front,” he noted.
