A Top Iranian General Is Killed in Syria
By DAN BILEFSKY and ANNE BARNARDOCT. 9, 2015

A prominent Iranian general was killed in Syria Thursday night, Iranian state media reported on Friday. His death illustrated both the level of Iran’s direct involvement on the government side in the Syrian civil war, and the pervasive violence of the conflict.

The general, Hussein Hamedani, a senior figure in the Revolutionary Guards, was killed in Aleppo Province, where he was advising the Syrian military, the reports said. The Iranian state news outlet Press TV reported, citing a statement by the Revolutionary Guards, that General Hamedani had been killed by Islamic State fighters, but did not say how he died.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with extensive contacts in Syria, said the general had been killed along with several bodyguards near the Kweiris military airport east of Aleppo. Aircraft based there are often used to bomb Al Bab, a city held by Islamic State militants.

General Hamedani was a top commander during the Iran-Iraq war, and led the crackdown against antigovernment protests that erupted after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was the target of international sanctions.

Iran has been providing an economic lifeline and intensive military assistance to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose forces have been locked in a protracted civil war in which more than 250,000 people have died and millions more have been driven from their homes or fled the country.

The battle lines in and around Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, are complicated, with control contested between government forces and rival insurgent groups...