TABNAK, Nov, 30 : Mourners gathered in the northern Shahrak-e-Mahallati neighborhood of the capital Tehran on Saturday morning and carried Brigadier General Kioumars Pourhashemi’s coffin, draped with the national Iranian flag, on their shoulders.
High-ranking military commanders and government officials were also present at the ceremony.
The IRGC public relations department announced in a statement on Thursday that Pourhashemi, better known by the nom de guerre Haj Hashem, who was one of the defenders of the Sayyida Zaynab Shrine and senior IRGC military advisers in Syria, had been killed in attacks by Takfiri terrorists on the outskirts of Aleppo.
Iran maintains an advisory mission in Syria at the request of Damascus to help the war-torn Arab country defeat the foreign-backed militants who have been fighting the Syrian government since 2011.
Israel has been the principal supporter of terrorist groups that oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the foreign-backed militancy erupted in Syria in March 2011.
