An Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer identified as Qasem Fezalahi was killed late Tuesday outside his home in the capital Tehran, officials confirmed Wednesday, saying an investigation is underway to clarify the incident.
Tehran Police spokesman Ali Sabahi told the Iranian news agency Tasnim that Fezulahi, a member of the Revolutionary Guards in Greater Tehran, was shot by unidentified persons, with no claim of responsibility so far.
«Police experts in the capital are investigating the incident from various dimensions,» he said, adding that the authorities will give details about the case once the investigations progress.
The Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia have been blamed for the violent crackdown on protests since September over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman arrested in Tehran for allegedly wearing the veil incorrectly.
Reza Dastani, a member of the Revolutionary Guard, was killed in November in Isfahan, just days after the death in a bomb attack of Colonel Davud Yafari near the Syrian capital Damascus, an event blamed on Israel by the Iranian authorities.
Tehran also accused Israel of being behind the assassination of Colonel Hassan Sayad Jodaei in front of his residence in Tehran in May 2021. Jodaei was deputy commander of a unit of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force.
Fezulahi’s assassination took place on the day Iran commemorated the third anniversary of the death of Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, in a U.S.-executed bombing of the airport in Iraq’s capital Baghdad, where he had arrived on a secret visit.
Soleimani was one of the victims of a drone attack – which led the Iraqi Parliament to demand the departure of international troops from the country – perpetrated by the United States, which also included Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, then ‘number two’ of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – a coalition of Iraqi pro-government militias supported by Iran.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
