“Now the number of Iran’s martyrs as defenders of shrine has exceeded 1,000,” Mohammadali Shahidi Mahallati, head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs, has been quoted as saying by the Islamic Republic’s state-controlled Tasnim News Agency, according to Reuters. The foundation provides financial support to the relatives of troops killed fighting for Iran.
“It was a major increase in the reported death toll from just four months ago, when the Islamic Republic announced that 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria’s battlefields,” notes the U.K.-based news agency, adding that Mahallati’s comments came as the number of volunteer Iranian fighters has skyrocketed far beyond what the Islamic Republic is prepared to send to Syria.
The number of fatalities underlines Iran’s increasing military footprint on the front lines of the Syrian civil war.
In late September, Fox News reported that up to 3,000 Iranian-backed fighters, including members of the Lebanese-based terrorist group Hezbollah and Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had joined Assad troops and their Russian allies to launch a massive ground and air offensive against the rebel-held sector of Aleppo, a provincial capital city considered to be the epicenter of the Syrian conflict. (Read More)
