`USAF Struck Syrian Nuclear Site’
Published on Friday, November 2, 2007 by The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
by Jerusalem Post Staff
The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force,
the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli
and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with
tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under
construction.
The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets
provided cover for the US planes.
The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear
weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.
At the beginning of October, Israel’s military censor began to allow
the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report
to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained
clouded in mystery.
On October 28, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the cabinet that he had
apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan if Israel
violated Turkish airspace during a strike on an alleged nuclear
facility in Syria last month.
In a carefully worded statement that was given to reporters after the
cabinet meeting, Olmert said: `In my conversation with the Turkish
prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated
Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in
advance or in any case, to – in any way – violate or undermine Turkish
sovereignty, which we respect.’
The New York Times reported on October 13 that Israeli planes struck at
what US and Israeli intelligence believed was a partly constructed
nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, citing American and foreign
officials who had seen the relevant intelligence reports.
According to the report, Israel carried out the report to send a
message that it would not tolerate even a nuclear program in its
initial stages of construction in any neighboring state.
On October 17, Syria denied that one of its representatives to the
United Nations told a panel that an Israeli air strike hit a Syrian
nuclear facility and added that `such facilities do not exist in Syria.’
A UN document released by the press office had provided an account of a
meeting of the First Committee, Disarmament and International Security,
in New York, and paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying
that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid.
However, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA said media
reports, apparently based on a UN press release, misquoted the Syrian
diplomat.