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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Tuesday confirmed the death of the commander of the affiliated Basij paramilitary force in an US-Israeli strike.
“Commander Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij Organization, has been martyred,” the IRGC said on its Sepah News website, after Israel said it had killed him in an airstrike.
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Earlier on Tuesday, Israel’s military said it killed Soleimani “in a precise strike in Tehran.”
The Basij, a volunteer force under the IRGC, “led the main repression operations” by the authorities during recent mass protests in Iran, the Israeli army said.
Iran was rocked by unprecedented protests against the clerical establishment that peaked in January.
They were met with a crackdown in which, according to rights groups, thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands arrested.
Israel also said on Tuesday it killed Iran’s national security chief, Ali Larijani, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling him the leader of “the gang of gangsters” that runs the country.
Larijani’s death – which has not yet been confirmed by Tehran – would be a massive blow to Iran just weeks after US-Israeli strikes on February 28 killed Ali Khamenei, the country’s long-serving supreme leader, throwing the Middle East into war and upending global markets.
With AFP
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