MESOPOTAMIA NEWS INTEL SPECIAL : Satellite images show complete destruction of Iranian weapons cache
“The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
By Anna Ahronheim – JERUSALEM POST – January 15, 2019 13:42 – New satellite images of an Iranian weapons storehouse at the Damascus International Airport showed the complete destruction of the site following Israeli airstrikes on Friday.
A side-by-side comparison released by the Israeli satellite company ImageSat International shows a photo taken December 23 of a 20×50 meters structure alongside a photo taken on Monday January 14, in which three craters can be seen where the compound once stood.According to ImageSat, the structure was likely used as a missile storehouse, including for the Fajr-5, which can be launched from a mobile platform and has a reported range of 75 kilometers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that the airstrike was carried out by the Israeli Air Force on Friday, saying that Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks against Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
“The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
On Monday Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi denied that Tehran had any military bases or military presence in Syria, rebuffing claims made by Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.Gen.(res) Gadi Eisenkot that Israel has struck hundreds of Iranian targets in Syria over the past two years.
“The Zionist War Ministry’s comments are baseless, false, misleading, and is an attempt to justify their ongoing failures in the region,” Qasemi was quoted as saying by Iran’s official news agency, IRNA. He added that “the Zionists always spread lies and embark on psychological warfare to achieve their evil goals in the region. Iranian officials are in Syria strictly for consultation purposes. The Syrian government invited us in order to advise them on methods to fight terrorism.”
At the ceremony marking the appointment of incoming IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi Tuesday morning, Netanyahu warned Tehran to leave Syria.
“I’m telling you, get out of there fast. We won’t stop attacking,”he said.
Syria’s SANA state news agency said Israeli warplanes fired a number of missiles toward the Damascus area on Friday, triggering Syrian air defenses that shot most of them down.
“At 11:15 before midnight, Israeli warplanes coming from Galilee area launched several missiles towards the surroundings of Damascus and our air defenses immediately intercepted them and downed most of them,” a military source was quoted by SANA as saying, adding that there were no casualties in the strikes only “material damage to one of the ammunition warehouses.”
In late December, an Israeli strike against another Iranian weapons storehouse outside the Syrian capital of Damascus also completely destroyed storehouses which supposedly held Fajr-5 missiles at an Iranian base in the Syrian regime’s 4th Division camp in the Al-Muna area.