Israeli jets kill two in bomb raid on Syrian weapons site

Air strikes come a day after UN finds Assad’s regime responsible for attack that gassed 83 of his own people

ISRAELI jets yesterday bombed a Syrian military facility linked to President Bashar al-assad’s chemical weapons programme.

The 2am attack on the Syrian Scientific Research Centre (SSRC), which develops and produces chemical weapons, in the province of Homs near the Mediterranean coast, left at least two dead.

Syria describes the SSRC as a civilian institute, but the US has accused the centre of helping to develop the sarin gas used in an attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in April that killed 83 people.

After the bombing, Washington later sanctioned 271 of the SSRC’S chemists and other affiliated officials.

The strikes came a day after the United Nation Commission of Inquiry announced it had an “extensive body of information” indicating the Syrian regime was responsible for the Khan Sheikhoun attack. It was the most concrete finding yet by the body linking the Assad regime to chemical attacks on civilians. Syria’s government claims it no longer possesses chemical weapons after a 2013 agreement under which it pledged to surrender its chemical arsenal.

However, the international community, as well as former officials involved in the programme, has long alleged that the regime had not complied.

Responding to Israel’s strikes, a Syrian army official warned yesterday against the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region”.

Israel has conducted raids on military positions inside Syria and against suspected arms shipments believed to be headed to Lebanon’s Shia militia, Hizbollah, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces, nearly 100 times during the six-year war.

However, experts said the nature of yesterday’s target was “not routine”. Maj Gen Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “This is the first time that the target which was attacked was a formal Syrian facility.” He said it had also produced rockets which had been transferred to the Lebanese militia.

Amos Yadlin, the former Israeli intelligence chief, said the raid sent three messages: “That Israel won’t allow for empowerment and production of strategic arms. That Israel intends to enforce its red lines despite the fact that the great powers are ignoring them. And that the presence of Russian air defence does not prevent air strikes attributed to Israel.”

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said strikes also hit a military camp next to the facility that was used to store ground-to-ground rockets and where personnel of Iran and its ally, Hizbollah, were stationed.

“There are Iranian experts using the research centre there. Hizbollah also uses the facility,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory.

The strikes follow a series of statements by Israel in recent weeks accusing Iran of seeking to establish itself in Syria and of building sites to produce “precision-guided missiles” in both Syria and Lebanon. Israeli officials fear an emboldened Iran and Hizbollah may direct the missiles at Israel once the war winds down in Syria.

♦ The Us-led coalition has killed dozens of jihadists linked to a convoy of Isil buses stranded in the middle of the Syrian desert, a US military official said yesterday. The convoy, which initially consisted of 17 vehicles, has been stalled in the Deir Ezzor region since August 29. US officials say about 300 Isil jihadists were initially aboard, along with a similar number of civilians, likely family members.

‘Israel intends to enforce its red lines despite the fact that the great powers are ignoring them’