DAMASCUS – At least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East were killed on April 1 when Israeli warplanes struck a building in Damascus, Syria, that is part of the Iranian Embassy complex, according to Iranian and Syrian officials.

The strike in Damascus, the Syrian capital, appeared to be among the deadliest attacks in a years-long shadow war between Israel and Iran that has included the assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists.

That covert war has moved into the open as tensions between the countries have intensified over Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, the Iranian-backed militia that led the Oct 7 attack on Israel.

Four Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, confirmed that Israel had been behind the strike in Damascus, but denied that the building had diplomatic status.

But the Syrian ambassador to Iran, Mr Shafiq Dayoub, said the strike had targeted a diplomatic building and was a “clear and complete violation of all international conventions and norms”.

Video circulating on social media after the strike showed a destroyed building next to the embassy, and photographs showed an entrance gate with a sign identifying it as the consular section.

The embassy said on X, formerly Twitter, that the building housed a consular section and the ambassador’s residence.

Footage broadcast by Iranian and Syrian news agencies showed a ruined building, burnt cars, shattered glass and debris on the ground.

The dead included General Ali Reza Zahdi, 65, who oversaw Iran’s covert military operations in Syria and Lebanon, two other generals and four officers in the Quds Force, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said in a statement.

Mr Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that seeks to prevent wars, said that targeting a diplomatic facility would be “akin to targeting Iran on its own soil”.

Israeli officials said the building was an outpost of the Revolutionary Guard, making it a legitimate military target.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian strongly condemned the strike and said he had spoken to his Syrian counterpart about the “Zionist regime’s attack on the consulate section of the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Damascus”.

“Netanyahu has lost his mental balance because he has faced back-to-back defeat in Gaza and has not achieved the Zionists’ ambitious goals,” Mr Amirabdollahian said in a statement, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The strike came as Israeli soldiers withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital complex, Al-Shifa, leaving it badly battered after a two-week raid in which the Israeli military said it had killed about 200 Palestinian militants and arrested hundreds of others after extended firefights.

Dr Taysir al-Tanna, a long-time vascular surgeon at the Gaza City hospital, said that many of the main buildings – including the emergency, obstetrics and surgical wards – had been badly damaged in the fighting, and the main gate smashed.

“Now, it looks like a wasteland,” he said.

The Israeli military said the Palestinians killed had been militants and that those who were arrested had been suspected militants, including some believed to be senior commanders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It said two Israeli soldiers had been killed and eight others wounded in the raid.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari blamed militants for the destruction at the hospital, saying they had fortified themselves in hospital wards, fired on soldiers and refused calls to surrender.

“We had to fire on the buildings in order to stop that and to kill the terrorists,” he said.

Israeli forces evacuated displaced civilians sheltering at the compound, as well as some patients, and placed other patients in a building away from the fighting, Mr Hagari said.

The World Health Organisation said on March 31 that at least 21 patients had died since the Israeli raid began in mid-March, though the causes of death were unclear. By this past weekend, 107 patients remained – 30 of them bedridden – without drinking water and with only minimal medication, the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement.

Israeli forces first raided Al-Shifa in November, maintaining that Hamas militants had built a command centre in tunnels underneath it. Hamas and the hospital director said the facility was solely used as a refuge for civilians.

The Israeli military later publicised some evidence to support its case, including by showing reporters a fortified tunnel constructed underneath the hospital grounds. An investigation by The New York Times found that the evidence suggested that Hamas had used the site for cover and stored weapons there.

After little more than a week, Israeli troops withdrew in compliance with a brief ceasefire. But after the fighting resumed, Israeli forces closed in on the hospital again in March in an attempt to root out what they said was a renewed insurgency by armed groups in northern Gaza.

“Hamas and Islamic Jihad have started to rebuild themselves in the north,” said Mr Hagari. “And they re-based themselves inside Shifa.”

Hamas called the destruction at the hospital “a horrific crime” and said Israel had perpetrated it “with full and unlimited support from the administration of US President (Joe) Biden”.

In a visit to Al-Shifa on March 30, Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, declared the raid “extremely successful” and said it had showed militant groups that “a hospital is not a safe place” for them.

Israeli officials and a member of the Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the Quds Force, said the Damascus strike on April 1 had targeted a meeting in which Iranian intelligence officials and Palestinian militants were to discuss the war in Gaza. Among them were leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group armed and funded by Iran. NYTIMES