BEIRUT—A top Iranian military commander who played a crucial role in Tehran’s efforts to defend the Syrian regime was killed in the outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, Iran’s state media said Friday.
Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani died at the hands of “Daesh terrorists” on Thursday while conducting advisory duties, Iranian state media said, quoting a statement by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
Although the statement used the Arab acronym for the extremist group Islamic State to describe those responsible for Gen. Hamedani’s death, the circumstances of his demise weren’t disclosed. The Iranian government, like the Syrian regime, tends to use “Daesh” and “terrorists” as catchall terms for all opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.
Gen. Hamedani, a longtime commander in the elite military unit of the IRGC, is believed to have directly overseen the organization of pro-Assad forces into groups such as the Popular Committees, which were later folded into the so-called National Defense Force.
These local militias are now estimated to number anywhere between 150,000 and 190,000 people. They are mainly members of Mr. Assad’s Shiite Muslim-linked Alawite sect, while some belong to Syria’s own small Shiite community. The majority of those fighting Mr. Assad are Sunni.
Before he was dispatched to Syria to provide know-how and training to the Assad regime, Gen. Hamedani was a commander in the IRGC’s elite military unit that led crackdowns on Iranian protesters in 2009.
Aleppo has emerged as a fierce battleground between forces loyal to Mr. Assad and those fighting to depose him.
The city is roughly divided in half, with the regime and its allies holding several western neighborhoods and most Islamist rebel groups backed by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia controlling the rest. Aleppo’s suburbs are contested by these two sides, as well as by Islamic State, which dominates the northern and eastern outskirts of the city.
On Thursday, Islamist rebel groups who belong to a northern alliance called Jaish al-Fateh launched an offensive against regime forces in an area north of Aleppo known as Breij.
The pro-government forces include Iranian fighters and foreign, Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen, who were trying to break a long-running rebel siege of two Shiite villages in the area, opposition activists said.
Besides keeping Mr. Assad afloat with billions of dollars in aid since the start of the Syrian conflict more than four years ago, Iran has funded and trained tens of thousands of local militiamen and overseen the arrival of thousands of foreign Shiite fighters into the country, led by Tehran’s main regional proxy the Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
Experts are divided over the size of Iran’s own military presence in Syria. Some put the number in the hundreds, while others believe it is in the thousands, including IRGC field commanders, advisers and trainers along with volunteers from the IRGC’s paramilitary unit known as the Basij.
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Originally Posted by AngryCanadian
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