WarSclerotic

An Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who fought in Syria and Iraq has accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun.

A Sunday report on the IRGC’s website said Gen. Ghodratollah Mansouri accidentally shot himself in the head while cleaning his pistol.

The report said Mansouri was a veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and a “defender of the shrine,” a reference to Iranians who fight the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Since 2014, Mansouri was a regional commander of the Guard’s ground forces in the northeastern city of Mashhad, some 900 kilometers (600 miles) east of the capital, Tehran. The unit he was commanding is based in the Khorasan-Razavi Province, bordering Afghanistan.

Iranian media was rife Sunday with conflicting reports regarding the cause of Mansouri’s death, with some saying he died “after a long illness.”

A local news website in Mashad also reported that the general died in a hospital in the northwestern city after an illness, but provided no details.

Most of the reports alleging the latter were removed from Iranian media websites after the IRGC released its official statement.

Still, some on Iranian social media questioned whether Mansouri’s death was, in fact, an accident.

IRGC Commander Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari issued a statement of condolences to Mansouri’s family.