2 Iranian Revolutionary Guards killed in Syria: Reports

By Ahmet Dursun

ISTANBUL (AA) – Two commanders from Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (RGC) were killed this week in Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province, Iranian media reported Monday.

Seyyid Riza Mirasi, a retired RGC colonel, was killed earlier this week, according to local media accounts, while RGC Major Abulfazl Nikzad was killed in Wednesday clashes between Syrian regime troops and opposition forces.

Early last month, three other RGC officers — one of whom was identified as Colonel Reze Rustemi Mukaddem — were killed in Aleppo, which remains the scene of fierce fighting between regime forces and armed opposition groups.

In May, a senior RGC commander acknowledged that as many as 1,200 Iranian soldiers had been killed in Syria — where Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are fighting alongside the Assad regime — since the conflict erupted five years ago.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests — which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings — with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, has put the death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.

*Anadolu Agency’s Sibel Ugurlu contributed to this report from Ankara

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