Thousands of Iranians attended a funeral procession in Tehran on Tuesday for two Revolutionary Guards killed in Israeli strikes in Syria last week.
Israel launched several missiles on Friday from the occupied Golan Heights against positions near Damascus, as part of a series of attacks in recent days including early Tuesday.
“The Zionists want to target the initial resistance, but the resistance will be stronger and more motivated,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Ramazan Sharif said, according to Tasnim News Agency.
“We will avenge the blood of the martyrs Milad Heidari and Meghdad Mahghani,” he promised, as thousands gathered in central Tehran to mourn them, chanting “down with Israel”.
“Follow their path,” Heidari’s mother told the large crowd at the funeral, urging them to ensure that the blood of the victims was not shed in vain.
During more than a decade of Syria’s civil war, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on its territory, targeting Iranian-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army posts.
Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, says it only deploys military advisers in the conflict-ridden country.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani, accused arch-enemy Israel of bringing “war and insecurity” to the Middle East and “creating discord in the region”.
In an apparent reference to Israel’s recent political turmoil and massive protests against the hard-right government’s proposed judicial reforms, he charged that there would be “no escape from an internal collapse”.
