June 21 (BBC/GNA) – Israel says it has killed a senior Iranian commander who helped plan the Hamas 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in a strike on Saturday on the city of Qom.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the killing of Saeed Izadi marked a key point in the conflict. He was “one of the orchestrators” of the attack, which killed about 1,200 people and saw many others taken to Gaza as hostages, said IDF chief Eyal Zamir.
“The blood of thousands of Israelis is on his hands,” he said on Saturday, calling it a “tremendous intelligence and operational achievement.”
Iran did not report Mr Izadi’s killing and has previously denied involvement in Hamas’s attack.
The IDF said it had killed him in a strike on an apartment in Qom, south of Tehran, in the early hours of Saturday. He had been in charge of the Palestine Corps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’s (IRGC) Quds Force, responsible for handling ties with the Palestinian armed groups.
He was reportedly instrumental in arming and financing Hamas, and had been responsible for military co-ordination between senior IRGC commanders and Hamas leaders, the IDF said.
In April 2024, Mr Izadi narrowly survived an Israeli air strike targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria – an attack that killed several high-ranking Quds Force commanders.
Israel later on Saturday also said it had killed another Quds Force commander, Behnam Shahriyari, in a drone strike as he was travelling in a car through western Iran.
He had been responsible for transporting missiles and rockets to Iran’s proxy groups across the region, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, said the IDF.
GNA/Credit: BBC