13 Iranian Revolutionary Guards killed in Syria fighting
Iranian media says 21 also wounded in recent days; key Khamenei adviser meets with Assad, vows continued support
Thirteen military advisers with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed in Syria in recent days and 21 others wounded, Iranian media reported Saturday.
All were from Iran’s northern province of Mazandaran, Hossein Ali Rezayi, a Guards spokesman in the region, told the ISNA and Fars news agencies.
The casualties happened in Khan Tuman village some 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest of the battleground city of Aleppo, according to a Guards statement, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Pro-regime troops had driven jihadists out of Khan Tuman in December, but fighting between regime forces and Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists and their allies killed more than 70 people south of Aleppo, a monitor said on Friday.
Al-Nusra Front and allied Islamists seized Khan Tuman and surrounding villages after less than 24 hours of clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Around 30 pro-regime troops were killed in the battle, said the Britain-based Observatory which relies on a network of sources in Syria.
Also Saturday, a senior Iranian official met with Syria’s President Bashar Assad, vowing continued support for his government in the country’s five-year-old civil war.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with Assad in Damascus on Saturday.
Syria’s state news agency SANA quoted Velayati as saying that Tehran will always stand by Syria because it “knows that terrorism does not target Syria but the whole people of the region.”
Iranian forces, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, have been fighting alongside Assad’s military in the Syrian civil war.
Velayati’s comments came as Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that a cease-fire in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has been extended by three days starting Saturday.
More than 300 civilians were killed in two weeks of fighting in the divided city before the truce took hold on Thursday, in regime air strikes on its opposition-held east and rebel shelling of the regime-controlled west.