Qasim Fathullahi, a local Basij commander with the Mohammad Rasulullah Guards of Greater Tehran, was shot four times outside his house on Tuesday, according to Iranian media. He later succumbed to his injuries. Fathullahi’s shooting, which was described as a terrorist attack, comes on the third anniversary of the US drone assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Fathullahi was a commander of the security base at the Mokhtari neighborhood in southern Tehran, according to the Tasnim news agency. His unit is a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military formation that was merged with the Basij militia in 2008 and put in charge of security in the Iranian capital.
No group has taken responsibility for the shooting yet. The attack on Fathullahi happened in the evening, after a day of commemorations across Iran for the IRGC Quds Force commander Soleimani, killed in Iraq in 2020.