Metro
Israel’s Strike Kills Iranian Commander, Six Others at Syrian Consular Annex
Israeli air strikes destroyed the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Damascus Monday, Syrian and Iranian officials said, with a top Revolutionary Guard commander among seven members the force said were killed, amid worsening regional tensions.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps named Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and another high-ranking officer, Brigadier General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, as among seven of its members killed.
Britain-based war monitors the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 people, including several Guards members, were killed when “Israeli missiles… destroyed the building of an annexe to the Iranian embassy”.
The toll includes “eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese — all of them fighters, none of them civilians,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory with a network of sources in Syria, told AFP.
Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, giving a lower toll, told Iranian state TV that “at least five people were killed in the attack which was carried out by F-35 fighter jets” which fired six missiles at the building.
AFP reporters saw the annex building had caved in, and emergency services were rushing to search for victims under the rubble as sirens wailed in the upscale Damascus district of Mazzeh.
Security personnel shielded the site where earth-moving equipment was brought in to clear the debris and remove charred vehicles from the road outside, watched by a crowd of onlookers.
Syria’s defence ministry said “the attack destroyed the entire building, killing and injuring everyone inside, and work is underway to recover the bodies and rescue the wounded from under the rubble”.
– Regional tensions –
Iranian state TV said Zahedi — a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force — was among the dead.
The Observatory said Zahedi served as the leader of the Quds Force for Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, adding that he was killed along with his deputy, his aide, and the Quds force chief of staff for the same three countries.
Two other members of the Guards and two Iranian advisers were also killed in the strike, the Observatory said.
The targeted building is next to the Iranian embassy, the front of which is decorated with a large portrait of Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 in an American drone strike in Iraq.
The Damascus strikes were the fifth in a week to hit Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is supported by Iran, Israel’s long-time arch foe in the region.
Syria’s state news agency SANA had earlier reported that “our air defence systems confronted enemy targets in the vicinity of Damascus”.
Iran’s ambassador, Akbari, vowed the attack “will lead to our decisive response”, adding “the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate shows the reality of the Zionist entity which recognises no international laws and does all that is inhumane to achieve its goals”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called for a “serious response by the international community”.
– ‘Heinous attack’ –
Only the gate of the building was left standing after the attack, with a sign mentioning “the consular section of the embassy of Iran”, an AFP journalist said.
Window panes in buildings within a 500-metre (550 yard) radius had been shattered, and many parked cars were damaged by the blast.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad also denounced the attack after visiting the site, calling it a “heinous terrorist attack… killing a number of innocent people”, in a statement carried by SANA.
The Gaza war, which started with the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, has devastated the coastal territory and also seen Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah exchange near daily cross-border fire.
Israel has also struck targets in Syria, mostly army positions as well as those of Iran-backed combatants.
Hamas condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack which it called a “dangerous escalation.”
Moscow, a Damascus ally along with Tehran, blamed “the Israeli Air Force” for the “unacceptable attack against the Iranian consular mission in Syria.”
The Damascus strike came three days after the Observatory reported Israeli strikes that had killed 53 people in Syria, including 38 soldiers and seven members of Hezbollah.
It was the highest Syrian army toll in Israeli strikes since the Israel-Hamas war began, said the monitor.
“Syria and Lebanon have become one extended battleground from the Israeli perspective,” Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, told AFP after the Friday strikes.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted with the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign, aimed at destroying Hamas, has killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
A former US lawmaker who was Donald Trump’s first pick to run the Justice Department paid for sex numerous times, including with an underage girl, according to a congressional report released Monday.
Matt Gaetz also regularly used cocaine and ecstasy, and bought marijuana from his Capitol Hill office, according to the 37-page document, the culmination of a long-running probe by the House Ethics Committee.
“The committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote, according to reports.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing — pointing to the Justice Department’s decision not to bring charges against him in 2023 after a criminal probe — and the report came out despite him suing the committee to block its release.
Congressional investigators found that the 42-year-old broke multiple Florida laws on sexual misconduct, although they cleared him of federal sex trafficking violations.
The report listed payments by Gaetz totaling more than $90,000 to 12 women “likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use” between 2017 and 2020.
They focused on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas during which Gaetz is alleged to have had sex with four women and took the ecstasy.
The ex-congressman is an incendiary figure with few friends on Capitol Hill, but was a staunch Trump loyalist and a favorite of the president-elect’s ardent supporters.
He resigned from Congress in November after Trump nominated him for US attorney general.
– ‘High school’ victim –
The allegations had been openly discussed for years and Gaetz withdrew from consideration when it became clear he lacked sufficient backing from Republicans to win Senate confirmation.
Gaetz posted a series of tweets refuting some of the allegations in the report, including that he paid for sex.
“Giving funds to someone you are dating — that they didn’t ask for — and that isn’t ‘charged’ for sex is now prostitution?!?” he posted on X.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses.”
Women told congressional investigators they were paid for sex at parties and other events by Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida who was jailed for 11 years.
One encounter allegedly involved a 17-year-old girl, who told the committee she had sex with Gaetz twice at a July 2017 party.
“Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex. At the time, she had just completed her junior year of high school,” the report says.
All the women who testified said the sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual. Gaetz denied having sex with a minor in written responses to the committee.
Two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea early Sunday in “an apparent case of friendly fire,” the US military said.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels said later on Sunday they had “targeted” the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman a day earlier in an operation that led to “shooting down an F-18 aircraft” and thwarting “American-British aggression” against Yemen.
United States Central Command said late on Saturday that both US pilots were recovered alive but “initial assessments indicate that one of the crew members sustained minor injuries”.
This incident, “was not the result of hostile fire, and a full investigation is underway,” CENTCOM said.
The potentially disastrous mistake underscores the dangers of a mission the United States has been involved in for more than a year to counter Yemen’s Huthi rebels.
The Huthis have repeatedly targeted merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, waterways vital to global trade.
CENTCOM said the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg “mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18” fighter aircraft, which Navy pilots had flown off the USS Harry S Truman.
On Saturday the United States said it struck targets including a missile storage facility in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa, hours after a Huthi rebel missile wounded people in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv.
US forces also shot down multiple Huthi attack drones and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea, CENTCOM said.
“The operation involved US Air Force and US Navy assets, including F/A-18s,” CENTCOM said.
The Huthis say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel and Hamas have been at war since October 7, 2023.
The death toll from a tragic stampede in Anambra State has risen to 22, local authorities confirmed on Sunday.
The Anambra State Police Command, through its spokesman Superintendent Tochukwu Ikenga, disclosed that the police have commenced an investigation into the incident. Ikenga also stated that several injured victims are receiving medical treatment.
“The Commissioner of Police, Nnaghe Obono Itam, visited the hospital where the victims of the tragic stampede that occurred on December 21, 2024, in Okija, Ihiala Local Government Area, are receiving treatment,” Ikenga said. “Regrettably, 22 people lost their lives. The CP commiserates with the families and friends of the deceased and wishes the injured a quick recovery.”
The stampede occurred on Saturday during a rice distribution event at Amaranta Stadium in Okija. The event, organized by the Obijackson Foundation, was intended to provide relief to residents.
A Pattern of Tragedy
The Anambra incident follows a series of similar tragedies across the country. Earlier in December, a stampede at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama, Abuja, claimed 10 lives. A few days prior, a children’s funfair in Ibadan, Oyo State, ended in disaster, with 35 children losing their lives and six others critically injured.
The string of incidents has raised serious concerns about crowd management during large-scale events in Nigeria. Prominent figures, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi, have called for urgent reforms.
“It is with a heavy heart and deep sorrow that I receive yet again the heartbreaking news of lives lost in tragic stampedes, this time in Okija, Anambra, and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory,” Atiku wrote on his X handle late Saturday. “It is imperative that those entrusted with the organization of such large-scale events take the utmost care in crowd management, prioritizing the safety and well-being of all participants.”
Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, lamented the incidents as a reflection of the rising desperation caused by hunger in Nigeria.
“I am deeply saddened and distressed by the tragic loss of lives in desperate searches for food,” Obi wrote on X. “While I will not cast blame, I appreciate the organizers of these events for their kind gestures. However, these tragedies reflect the systemic failures that plague our society.”
A Call for Reform
The recent stampedes underscore the urgent need for better planning and safety protocols at public events. Experts and stakeholders are calling on authorities and event organizers to adopt stringent crowd management strategies to prevent future tragedies.
Meanwhile, families of the victims continue to mourn their loss, as the nation grapples with the deepening economic challenges that have driven many to desperation.
-
Metro4 days agoGrim Friday: Man, Wife, Grandson Perish in Ibadan Fire
-
News4 days ago
NNPCL Refutes Shutdown Claims: Port Harcourt Refinery Fully Operational
-
News5 days ago
Bank Robberies Now History in Lagos Since 2014 – IGP
-
Crime & Court5 days ago
Human Rights Lawyer, Dele Farotimi, Granted ₦30m Bail
