Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander dies of Covid-19

The Iranian Tasnim news agency, which is close to the IRGC, reported that Brigadier-General Abdul Rasool Ostovar Mahmudabadi became infected with Covid-19 while on a mission in Iraq and died on Sunday morning.

It did not say what the nature of the mission was.

Tasnim said that Mahmudabadi had fought in Syria and Iraq alongside General Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC Quds Force commander who was killed in a US airstrike near Baghdad Airport last January, and Hossein Hamdani, who was killed in Aleppo in 2015.

The Quds Force is responsible for the IRGC's extraterritorial operations. It has played a key role in supporting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the mainly Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) militias in Iraq, who have fought against the Islamic State extremist group but operate outside Iraqi government control.

The semi-official Iranian Fars news agency said that Mahmudabadi had stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Soleimani during their operations abroad.

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Mahmudabadi also fought in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, commanding two brigades in the fight against Iraqi forces. Fars reported that his lungs had been damaged as a result of an Iraqi chemical weapons attack during that conflict and that this had caused complications after he was infected with coronavirus.

Over the course of his career, Mahmudabadi established the Saberin Takavar Brigade of the IRGC and headed a military academy belonging to the IRGC. He also served as the commander of the Madina Munawwara military base in Southern Iran, as well as the Hamza military base in northwestern Iran.

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