4 Members of Security Detachment Detained After Israeli Strike on Iran Revolutionary Guards in Damascus

Syrian security and emergency personnel search through the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a meeting of leaders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (AFP)
Syrian security and emergency personnel search through the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a meeting of leaders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (AFP)
TT

4 Members of Security Detachment Detained After Israeli Strike on Iran Revolutionary Guards in Damascus

Syrian security and emergency personnel search through the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a meeting of leaders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (AFP)
Syrian security and emergency personnel search through the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a meeting of leaders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (AFP)

Military intelligence authorities in the Damascus government arrested four members of a security detachment in wake of the Israeli attack on the Mezzeh area in the Syrian capital last week.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left 12 people dead, including five Iranians, including three leaders in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, four Syrian member of factions loyal to Iran, two Lebanese, and an Iraqi.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Rami Abdulrahman, director of the UK-based monitor, confirmed that a colonel, his assistant, a non-commissioned officer, and a civilian have been arrested.

Mezzeh is considered “almost completely secure” due to the presence of high-ranking military, political figures, and embassies in the area. Residents of the area include members of the Revolutionary Guards, “Islamic Jihad” and Lebanese Hezbollah.

The building struck by Israel was being used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Blaming Israel for the strike, Iran vowed to retaliate at the “right time and place.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stressed that Iranian advisors in Syria will continue to “strongly” carry out their duties.

The latest attack has raised to at least 90 the death toll from 14 Israeli strikes on Syria since Israel launched its war against Gaza in October, revealed the Observatory.

This count includes 74 members linked to Hezbollah and Iranian militias, Syrians working with them, two unidentified individuals, and 14 casualties from government forces.

Fifty-six of the casualties were affiliated with Iranian militias, including key figures like Reza Mousavi and Brigadier General Haj Sadiq.



Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
TT

Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The UN Security Council extended an arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur region for another year, after experts said it had been regularly violated amid the ongoing civil war.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council extended until September 12, 2025 the sanctions regime in place since 2005, which is aimed solely at Darfur, AFP reported.

That includes individual sanctions -- asset freezes and a travel ban -- on three people, and an arms embargo.

The "people of Darfur continue to live in danger and desperation and despair ... This adoption sends an important signal to them that the international community remains focused on their plight," said deputy US ambassador Robert Wood.

Though sanctions do not apply to the whole country, their renewal "will restrict the movement of arms into Darfur and sanction individuals and entities contributing to or complicit in destabilizing activities in Sudan," he said.

More than 16 months of war between rival Sudanese generals has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered what the United Nations calls the world's worst internal displacement crisis.

The war pits the army under Sudan's de facto leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The UN and humanitarian organizations fear that the war could degenerate into new ethnic violence, particularly in Darfur.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the decision was a "missed opportunity" by the Council to extend the embargo to the whole of Sudan.

China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council who abstained the last time the embargo was renewed, in 2023, this time voted in favor.

The move "will go some way towards stemming the steady flow of illicit arms into the battlefield and calming down and deescalating the situation on the ground," said deputy Chinese ambassador Dai Bing.

He said the sanctions were "a means, not an end. They must not replace diplomacy."

In their annual report, published in January, experts charged by the Council with monitoring the sanctions regime said the arms embargo had been violated multiple times.