soldiers were officers, with several even reaching the rank of Brigadier. Additionally, 354 Afghan combatants had died who were fighting under the command of the IRGC, as part of the IRGC-equipped and trained Fatemiyoun Brigade, which is part of Hezbollah Afghanistan. Another 21 Pakistanis also died as part of the Zainabiyoun Brigade. The Afghan and Pakistani immigrants volunteered to go to Syria in exchange for salaries and citizenship. The Afghans were recruited largely from refugees inside Iran, and usually had combat experience before joining the IRGC; their status as members of the Iranian military is only vaguely acknowledged and sometimes denied, despite the troops being uniformed fighters led by IRGC officers. They were trained and equipped in Iran, paid salaries by the Iranian military, and received state funerals involving uniformed IRGC personnel. Mid to late October 2015 was particularly bloody for the IRGC, due to them stepping up their involvement in offensives around Aleppo. During this time, 30 IRGC officers, including "three generals, battalion commanders, captains and lieutenants" and "one pilot" were killed in fighting in Syria, as were several Afghan and Pakistani auxiliaries. The fallen included General Hossein Hamadani, Farshad Hosounizadeh (IRGC colonel and former commander of the Saberin Special Forces Brigade), Mostafa Sadrzadeh (commander of the Omar Battalion of the Fatmiyoon Brigade), and Hamid Mojtaba Mokhtarband (IRGC commander). Iraq, 2014–present Two battalions of Revolutionary Guards were reported to be operating in Iraq trying to combat the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. The IRGC is considered to be a principle backer of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a loose coalition of Shi'a militias allied with the Iraqi government in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In addition, Major General Qasem Soleimani was an instrumental force in the Iranian ground mission in Iraq against ISIS, purportedly planning the Second Battle of Tikrit. In December 2014, Brigadier General Hamid Taqavi, a veteran of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, was killed by snipers in Samarra. In May 2017, Shaaban Nassiri, a senior IRGC commander was killed in combat near Mosul, Iraq. In December 2019, the U.S. Air Force conducted airstrikes on weapons caches and facilities of the IRGC-sponsored militant group Kata'ib Hezbollah. In retaliation, the group attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in the Green Zone. On 3 January 2020, Major General Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport along with the PMF commander Abu