Hommam Al Nassim 
Iranian state television announced on Monday that several Iranian diplomats were killed in an Israeli raid on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Iranian media confirmed that the targeted building is attached to the embassy of the Republic of Iran and carries its flag, adding that the Iranian ambassador and his family in Syria were not injured in the attack.
Videos and photos circulating on social media showed the targeted building completely destroyed.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense said that “at about 17:00 pm on Monday, the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting the Iranian consulate building in Damascus.
“The aggression led to the destruction of the entire building and the martyrdom and injury of everyone inside, and work is underway to recover the bodies of the martyrs, rescue the wounded and remove the rubble,” she said.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that 6 people were killed in the attack, while Reuters quoted a security source as saying that among the dead was Iranian Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who serves as commander of the Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria.
Commenting on the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that “Netanyahu has completely lost his mental balance due to successive failures in Gaza and his failure to achieve Zionist goals,” and continued, “We consider that this aggression exceeded all diplomatic norms and international treaties, and we hold the entity responsible for the consequences of this step and on the international community,” as he put it, while the Iranian ambassador in Damascus, Hossein Akbari, promised to respond in kind in a timely manner.
The systems of the Israeli Ministry of Defense have been breached, raising concerns about the leakage of “sensitive information.”