Iran blames Israel for official killing

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has blamed “Zionist regime mercenaries” for the assassination of Commander Haj Hassan Shateri, a Revolutionary Guard member who was in charge of Iranian reconstruction efforts inside Lebanon. Shateri reportedly oversaw reconstruction in southern Lebanon following the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah. He was killed during a visit to the country this week. "Commander Hassan Shateri was martyred en route from Damascus to Beirut at the hands of Zionist regime mercenaries and backers," the force's spokesman Ramezan Sherif said in a statement. According to Iran's Fars news agency, Shateri was killed on Tuesday, although it did not elaborate on the circumstances of his death. His funeral was held in Tehran on Thursday morning, and was attended by Revolutionary Guard chief Ali Jaafari, head of the foreign operations Quds Force unit Qassem Soleimani and Ali Saidi, representative of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Shateri was shot dead by rebels while he was en route from the Syrian capital to Lebanon. "We do not know exactly where he was shot, but we do know that a rebel group ambushed his vehicle while en route from Damascus to Beirut," Britain-based Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. The Iranian embassy in Beirut said "armed terrorists" killed a man it identified as Hessam Khoshnevis, adding that he had been involved in reconstruction work in Lebanon. The embassy named him as "Hassan Shateri, also known as Hessam Khoshnevis.”