TEHRAN: A senior Iranian official has vowed to take revenge on Israel for its alleged involvement in the killing of a commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.

The Guard has accused "mercenaries and supporters" of Israel being responsible for Wednesday's killing of Gen. Hassan Shateri on the road linking Damascus to Beirut.

Israel has not commented on the killing.

Ali Shirazi, representative of Iran's supreme leader to the Guard, says Israel will soon pay the price for Shateri's killing. His comments were reported by the semi-official ISNA news agency Saturday.

Iranian media say Shateri was in charge of reconstruction projects in southern Lebanon. It is unclear what he was doing in Syria.

Tehran is a close Syrian ally. It counts on Syria as a bridge to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said engineer Hussam Khoshnevis, the head of the Iranian Committee for Reconstruction in Lebanon, was killed at the hands of “armed terrorist groups” while making his way from Damascus to Beirut.

The reason for the differing names and details of the killing remain unclear. - With The Daily Star