Hezbollah condemns Israeli strike that killed Iran general in Syria

Hezbollah has condemned an Israeli strike that left a senior general with Iran's Revolutionary Guards and three more fighters dead near the Syrian capital.

"We consider this assassination a blatant and shameless assault and a crossing of limits,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The strike on Monday targeted Razi Moussavi, the most senior commander in the Quds Force -- the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- to be killed outside Iran in nearly four years.

"Two foreign fighters and one Syrian fighter were also killed in the Israeli strike," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Moussavi was targeted shortly after he entered a farm in an area controlled by Iran-backed groups, said the British-based monitor with a network of sources on the ground.

Residents in the Sayyida Zeinab district south of Damascus, where the strike hit, reported that Iran-backed groups have tightened security there.

On Monday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi expressed condolences for Moussavi's death, saying Israel "will certainly pay for this crime".

An IRGC statement said that Moussavi was a "companion" of Qasem Soleimani, the former Quds force leader killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad nearly four years ago.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has intensified attacks in Syria, particularly against Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, since its war with Hamas, which Tehran supports, began in October.

Iran has long backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, with Tehran and the groups it supports helping him claw back territory lost in more than a decade of war.

Israel rarely comments on reported strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.

More than half a million people have been killed in Syria's war, which erupted in 2011 after a brutal crackdown of anti-government protests.