Reza Zarei, a military advisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was martyred in an Israeli airstrike on Syria. The IRGC advisor was martyred in the Israeli attack on the Syrian port of Banias early on Friday.

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Iran also blamed Israel for the strike, saying it “reserves the right to respond”. Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said Tehran would respond “at the appropriate time and place”, and condemned “an escalation in aggressive and provocative attacks” by Israel.

A well-informed source told Al Jazeera the target was an IRGC intelligence unit, adding that a senior IRGC intelligence official in Syria and his assistants were in the building.

In a brief statement, the IRGC said an air strike by Israeli fighter jets killed “a number of Syrian forces and four military advisers”. It later identified the people killed as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi and Saied Karimi, without sharing their ranks.

Iranian state television called it a “terrorist” attack by Israel, which has yet to comment.

The attack, which is believed to have been carried out with at least four missiles, completely destroyed a four-storey building, according to Iranian state media. At least one person was taken to hospital.

People and rescuers at the site of the attack [Louai Beshara/AFP]

Widening tensions

Saturday’s strike comes amid widening tensions in the region and the Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed nearly 25,000 people.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.

“Syria is not only a battleground of the power struggle between the regional and the global powers, but also is a ground for the intelligence wars as well,” said Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran.

“For Iran, Lebanon and particularly for Hezbollah, Syria is a crucial element in the so-called ‘Axis of the Resistance’, so that’s why all their presence in Syria is kept secret,” he added.

Last month, an Israeli air attack on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime IRGC adviser in Syria.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Earlier this month, an attack said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

Over the past weeks, rockets have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adding to tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

Iran on Monday struck Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, with ballistic missiles in what it said was an attack on an Israeli spy headquarters, a claim denied by Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish officials. At least four people were killed in the attack.

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No casualties or injuries have been reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry on Tuesday.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades – the armed branch of Hamas – said they retaliated with surface-to-air missiles.

“Our air defense responded to Zionist warplanes in the skies of the Gaza Strip with surface-to-air missiles at exactly 01:35 local time (10:35 GMT) Tuesday morning,” it said in a statement.

The attack comes after a rocket fired from the besieged Gaza Strip into southern Israel was intercepted on Monday, in the first such attack in months amid soaring tensions over Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage and no Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket, which Israel said was shot down by its Iron Dome interceptor.

Hamas had warned that any incidents at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a site revered by Muslims and Jews, would be a “red line” after Israeli forces raided the site in occupied East Jerusalem several times in recent days, arresting hundreds of Palestinians and leaving dozens injured.

Palestinians accuse Israel of encroaching at Al-Aqsa during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel says Palestinian protesters seek to disrupt Muslim prayer for political ends and to prevent visits by Jews, who are celebrating Passover.

Israeli police say they are committed to ensuring that members of all faiths can celebrate the holidays safely.

Prior to the rocket attack, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused Hamas of waging a “wild harassment campaign” against Israel.

Egypt and Jordan, which inked peace agreements with Israel decades ago and coordinate with it on security matters, have condemned the actions of Israeli forces at the site.

Jordan – which serves as custodian of the site – summoned Israel’s deputy chargé d’affaires in Amman on Monday to deliver a message of condemnation.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said on Monday that Israel’s “unilateral” moves against Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque seriously undermined the prospects for peace in the region, according to state media.

The monarch was speaking with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres when he made remarks that Israel was undertaking “provocative acts” in the mosque compound that violated “the legal and historic status quo” of the holy shrines.

On Friday, at least 152 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli police inside the mosque compound, the latest outbreak in an upsurge of violence that has raised fears of a slide back to wider conflict.

Crackdowns by Israeli forces on protesters who were demonstrating against attempts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah last year led to an escalation in violence as Hamas fighters launched rockets and Israel launched an 11-day assault on Gaza.

Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh on Monday offered praise for members of the Islamic Waqf, the trust that oversees the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, “who stand tall and those who throw rocks at the pro-Zionists who are defiling Al-Aqsa Mosque while under the security of the Israeli occupation government.”

In response to al-Khasawneh’s remarks, Bennett said: “This is unacceptable to us. This is a reward for the inciters, especially Hamas, which are trying to ignite violence in Jerusalem.”

Israel has sought to improve relations with Jordan over the past year and has recently normalized relations with other Arab states over their shared concerns about Iran.

But a recent wave of violence that left 25 Palestinians and 14 Israelis dead has brought renewed attention to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which it has sought to sideline in recent years.

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