ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Another senior military commander has been killed in fighting with extremist Islamist groups near Aleppo in northern Syria, Iran’s official Tasnim News Agency reported. It said that Col. Shafi Shafii, “one of the commanders” of Iran’s elite Quds force in Syria had been killed defending a Shiite shrine in Khan Touman, a village that is part of the Aleppo governorate. Tasnim, the news agency of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said that Shafii was killed in fighting with “takfiris,” a term meaning apostate that Shiite Iran uses to describe the militant fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) and other extremist Sunni groups. Tehran has so far confirmed the death of some 50 of its advisers and soldiers in the Aleppo area, where Islamist rebels have been locked in fierce fighting with forces loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Iran and Russia remain staunch backers of Assad, while Western and most other Arab countries want him ousted.
