A retired senior officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was recently martyred in Syria by Saudi,US-backed opposition rebels, according to reports Wednesday.
A man whose decapitated head had appeared in a photo five days previously was identified as IRGC Col. Mohammad Eskandari, according to a Syrian activist who goes by the pseudonym Charles Windsor (warning: graphic image).
IRGC commander Sardar (General) Abdullah Eskandari, who also has been the head of a state-run foundation in Fars province in Iran, was savagely martyred on Monday in Clashes in Damascus, according to the state-run media in Iran.
Martyr Eskandari, who was listed in other reports as a brigadier general, was reportedly killed by the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, a rebel group that has been fighting to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Windsor, who runs the Tharir Souri news network in Syria, which claims to provide unbiased reporting of the civil war, posted a photo of the decapitated head side by side with an unconfirmed photo of Eskandari taken at an unknown time or location.
The Iranian news agency ABNA also reported that Eskandari martyred in Syrian fighting.
The reports say that Abdollah Eskandari had travelled to Syria to defend the Sayida Zeinab shrine located in the southern suburbs of Damascus. The shrine is a center of pilgrimage for Shi'a from around the world.
Other news sites reported that he was killed a few days earlier, on May 22. Eskandari's body has reportedly not been sent back to Iran yet.
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