Iranian Revolutionary Guards general killed in Syria - IRGC

ANKARA (Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general has been killed near Aleppo, where he was advising the Syrian army on their battle against Islamic State fighters, the guards said in a statement on Friday. General Hossein Hamedani was killed late on Wednesday, the statement said. Iran is the main regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has provided military and economic support during Syria's four-year-old civil war. Hamedani was a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and was made deputy chief commander of the elite forces in 2005. In the biggest deployment of Iranian forces yet, sources told Reuters last week that hundreds of troops had arrived since late September to take part in a major ground offensive planned in west and northwest Syria. Iran denies having any military forces in Syria. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Dominic Evans and Kevin Liffey)