NCRI – Mostafa Sadrzadeh, a commander of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, was killed in Syria, south of Aleppo, on October 23. The brigade, controlled and commanded by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is composed of Afghan forces residing in Iran that are fighting in Syria to prop up the Assad dictatorship and are involved in the murder of the Syrian people.
Sadrzadeh was a founder of the Fatemiyoun Brigade and was in charge of its Amar Battalion. The Iranian regime’s state-run Fars News Agency, affiliated with the IRGC, reported on October 23: “A number of forces who fought in the Iran-Iraq war were in the military unit under his [Sadrzadeh] command.”
State media have also published photographs of Sadrzadeh standing alongside Qassem Soleimani, the notorious commander of the IRGC Quds Force.
Sadrzadeh is one of several top IRGC commanders that have been killed in Syria in the past few weeks.
On Saturday Fars also reported that Milad Mostafavi, a Revolutionary Guard, has been killed in the fight in Aleppo.
On Sunday state media reported that two other Revolutionary Guards, Sajjad Tahernia and Ruhollah Emadi, were killed on Friday fighting in Syria.
Also, according to the IRGC’s public relations section, in recent days, eight other Revolutionary Guards were killed in Syria.
Similarly, on October 23, two members of the Ansar Corps (especially allocated to the protection of senior officials), including Abdollah Bagheri, a bodyguard of the Iranian regime’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were killed in Syria.
Furthermore, a state-run website called asriran.com reported that on Thursday (October 22), another 15 IRGC forces were killed in Syria. The IRGC however did not wish to disseminate this news and denied the report.
In recent weeks, the Iranian regime’s forces in Syria are suffering some of their greatest casualties.
Nonetheless, in recent days, IRGC Public Relations Officer Ramadan Sharif and Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Abdollahian, have talked about an “increase in the advisory forces” of the IRGC in Syria.
The number of IRGC officer casualties and the publication of the names of the military units that are participating in the Syrian conflict show that the IRGC now has stationed thousands of forces in Syria.
The following senior IRGC commanders have been killed in Syria:
- Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, one of the founders of IRGC, in charge of the Iranian regime’s forces fighting in Syria to keep dictator Bashar Assad in power (October 8, 2015)
- Gen. Farshad Hassounizadeh, former commander of the Saberin Brigade, a Special Forces unit of the IRGC (October 12, 2015)
- Colonel Hamid Mokhtarband, former chief-of-staff of the 1st Brigade in Ahvaz, south-west Iran (October 12, 2015)
- Colonel Moslem Khizab (October 18, 2015)
Rasoul Pourmorad, a commander of the IRGC Bassij force in Qazvin (October 14, 2015) - Nader Hamid, an official from the IRGC’s paramilitary Bassij force in charge of organizing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s paramilitary forces in the civil war (October 2015)
- Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Ali Allah-Dadi (January 18, 2015)
- Brig. Gen. Abdollah Eskandari (May 2014)
- Brig. Gen. Esmail Haydari (July 2013)
- Brig. Gen. Hassan Shateri (February 2013)