An Israeli air strike on January 20 that targeted a building in Syria's capital, Damascus, used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) killed four Iranians, including two senior officials, Iranian media and the IRGC said.
In an official statement, the IRGC named its four members who were killed in the attack as Hojatullah Omidhar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, and Saeed Karimi.
However, Nour News, which is thought to have close ties to the country’s intelligence services, identified two of the dead as General Sadegh Omidzadeh, the intelligence deputy of the IRGC's expeditionary Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy, Hajj Gholam.
Separately, Sky News Arabic channel reported that one of those killed in the strike was Akram al-Ajuri, a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Organization.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based opposition war monitor with a network of sources inside Syria, said at least six people -- five Iranians and a Syrian -- were killed in the strike that occurred during a meeting of from Iranian-backed groups.
The monitor said four other people were still missing under the rubble.
There was no immediate explanation for the media reports' discrepancy in the numbers, names, and nationalities of those killed in the attack on the Damascus neighborhood known as a high-security zone home to lRGC leaders and pro-Iran Palestinian factions.
Israeli media reported the attack quoting Reuters news agency, but there was no immediate official confirmation that Israel was behind the strike.
The attack occurred four weeks after Razi Musavi, a high-ranking official in IRGC's elite Quds Force, was killed in a similar attack in the Zainabiyah neighborhood of Damascus.
Musavi was responsible for military coordination between Iran and Syria, according to Reuters, while Tasnim news agency, which is close to the IRGC, reported that he had been one of the oldest advisers of the force in Syria and "an associate" of Qasem Soleimani, a former Quds commander who was killed in January 2020 in an air strike by U.S. forces near Baghdad.