Baghdad: A senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp was killed fighting Daesh west of the Iraqi city of Mosul, Tehran-based Tasnim agency reported on Saturday.
It is the first time Iran has announced the death of a senior commander during the operations launched in October to drive the Daesh terrorists out of Mosul.
“Commander Shaaban Nassiri was martyred in the operation to free the west of Mosul,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted the Revolutionary Guards as saying.
Gen. Shaaban Nasiiri was an adviser to Qasim Sulaimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Sulaimani has acted as a key adviser to Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces - an umbrella group of mostly Shiite militia forces sanctioned by the Iraqi government - in the fight against Daesh since 2014.
The Popular Mobilisation Forces are largely supported by Tehran which has provided weapons, training and advisers credited with important early victories against the extremists in 2014 before the US began a campaign of air strikes targeting the group.
