Israel has carried out airstrikes against Syrian military sites, where it suspects the regime of reactivating its chemical weapons program, according to US security sources and “Western” cited by the Washington Post, December 13. These strikes are said to have taken place in March 2020 and June 8, 2021. The Jewish state has not commented on these revelations.
However, Israeli Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern, interviewed on Tuesday (December 14) by military radio, signaled that his country could not agree to Syria having such weapons. “We have a neighbor who has already proven that he does not hesitate to use chemical weapons, even against his own people, he recalls. [Bachar] Al-Assad must not have chemical weapons. “
According to the American daily, Israel would have acted after having estimated, in 2019, that the Syrian army had obtained a large quantity of a calcium phosphate, which could be transformed into a precursor of sarin gas. This material would have been delivered to branch 450 of the 3,000 Institute, the nerve center of the Syrian chemical program within the Center for Scientific Studies and Research (CERS), officially dissolved in 2013.
A threat to Israel
During the civil war, chemical attacks carried out by the regime in Ghouta, a rebel suburb of Damascus, documented at the time by The world, had led the United States, France and the United Kingdom to prepare retaliatory bombings. These strikes were called off at the last minute, in exchange for Damascus’ commitment to dismantle its chemical arsenal, a mission that had been entrusted to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
In 2018, after five years of inspections, the OPCW declared that it had fulfilled this task. But since that date, NGOs have revealed how the Syrian authorities have managed to retain part of their production capacity. For Israel, this program constitutes a threat: it was launched by Damascus in the 1980s, with the intention of establishing a “strategic balance” in the face of Israeli nuclear power.
Resumption of activity on several sites
According to Washington Post, The Hebrew state first targeted in 2020 a villa and a complex in a suburb of Homs. Since then, he has reportedly noticed an upturn in activity on several sites. The attack on June 8 reportedly targeted an army storage bunker near Nasiriyah, a village north of Damascus, and two other sites near Homs, including a CERS branch in the town of Masyaf. Syrian media reported seven dead at the time, including a colonel, Ayham Ismail, posthumously elevated to the rank of general.
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