A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser was killed in an Israeli airstrike near Syria's capital Damascus on Monday, according to security sources and Iran's state media.

The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.

Iran's state television interrupted its regular news broadcast to announce that Mousavi had been killed, describing him as one of the Guards' oldest advisers in Syria.

It said he had been "among those accompanying Qassem Soleimani," the head of the Guards' elite Quds Force, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Iraq in 2020.

There was no immediate comment from Israel's military.

Israel has for years carried out attacks against what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it backed President Bashar Assad in the war that erupted in Syria in 2011.

Earlier this month, Iran said Israeli strikes had killed two Revolutionary Guards members in Syria who had served as military advisers there.

Syrian media earlier reported a series of Israeli attacks in the area, the sound of which reverberated widely in the suburbs of the capital.

Iran maintains a significant military presence in Syria, which has often fueled tension between Tehran and Washington as American forces are also stationed there.

The escalation in tensions comes as the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip rages on, claiming nearly 20,700 Palestinian lives.

A Britain-based monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported Israeli strikes Monday on positions used by Iranian groups and by Lebanon's powerful Tehran-aligned Hezbollah in the Sayyida Zeinab area.

Residents of the area reported hearing loud explosions and seeing columns of smoke rising from farms there.