Photos show cleansing of suspect Syrian site - International Herald TribuneCan't hide from the eyes in the sky...New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.
Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.
Here's the photo. They took SOMETHING down in a hurry...
J.
Comments (1)
I probably passed over that site 10 or 12 times in GE last year looking for it. Syria did *nothing* to defend it. Unlike their Chinese reactor that sits in an obscure agricultural center in the middle of a military district, this site was truly anonymous.
It does fit my general search criteria: rail and road access, along with water nearby. And the number of buildings similarly situated are numerous, given the rivers in Syria. The MEAB site for processing phospahte ore into 'yellowcake' sits on Lake Latakia, near Homs and, once one adjusts for perspective, the single photo of it that has been published fits perfectly. That only took me a few weeks to find *with* the photo and good imagery available... the reporting on it had mis-directed its placement to be co-located with a refinery. It wasn't.
This site north of Deir Zzor that suddenly disappeared has the benefit of being just on the northern edge of one oil field and the western edge of another. There are all sorts of processing building, bulk storage facilities and the like scattered around that region and Syria attempted 'security through obscurity'. Built nowhere close to SAM sites, with no military facilities nearby, and no real housing complex, save for that smaller building which can't house many people, they did a great job in obscuring the place in anonymity.
My hat is off to the Israelis! Excellent work!
Posted by ajacksonian | October 27, 2007 3:36 PM
Posted on October 27, 2007 15:36