Israel ‘struck bomb facility’

A SYRIAN site bombed by Israel in September was probably a plant for assembling a nuclear bomb, an Israeli nuclear expert said yesterday, challenging other analysts’ conclusions that it housed a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.

Tel Aviv University chemistry professor Uzi Even, who worked in the past at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, said satellite pictures taken before the Israeli strike on September 6 showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of reactors.

Israel has maintained an almost total official silence over the strike, but foreign media reports said the strike hit a nuclear facility made with North Korean help and modelled on its Yongbyon reactor.

Damascus denies it has a nuclear program, and North Korea has said it was not involved.

Last month, American analyst David Albright said satellite images supported suspicions that the target was indeed a reactor.

But in an interview yesterday with the Haaretz newspaper, Mr Even compared pictures of a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, in which a cooling tower with steam rising from it can clearly be seen, with the Syrian images, where no such structure appears.