Satellite Images Show Israeli Airstrike At Syrian Military Research Facility

Channel 2The Jamraya research facility as of February 4.

The military research facility that Syria said had been hit by an Israeli airstrike last week appears to be largely unscathed while the road next to it appears scorched, according to satellite images from Digital Globe broadcast on Israel's Channel 2.

The images, taken February 4, corroborate the notion that Israel bombed a group of vehicles that were parked at the Jamraya research center near Damascus.

Last week Western diplomats and security officials said the strike targeted a convoy — either in Lebanese territory or on the highway three miles south of the border — that was carrying Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles that was on its way to Hezbollah.

Syria said the target was the buildings at the facility, which lies about 8 miles from the border.

The truth appears to be in the middle. One thing that's still unclear is if the convoy at the facility was indeed carrying Russian weapons headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Here's the facility eight months before the attack:

Maj. Gen. Adnan Salo, a former head of the chemical weapons unit in the Syrian Army who defected and is now in Turkey, told The New York Times that the complex produces both conventional and chemical weapons.

Dany Shoham, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Times that the Jamarya compound is a principal Syrian facility for "upgrading chemical and biological war agents" and "upgrading dispersal and delivery systems for those agents.”

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