JERUSALEM: The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that dozens of its troops were flown into Syria in September to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran.
The military, which rarely comments on its activities inside Syria, said in a statement that the September 8 raid involved more than 100 Israeli commando soldiers who dismantled the facility in the Masyaf area near the Mediterranean coast.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported at the time that 27 people were killed in the raid. The Israeli military did not disclose any casualty figure.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since a civil war broke out there in 2011, mainly on Iranian-linked targets.
In a statement on Thursday, the military said the underground Masyaf compound “included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets” for Lebanon’s Hezbollah “and other Iranian terror proxies in the region”.
Israel army says struck Iran’s missile manufacturing facilities
Troops were flown in on helicopters, “with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets and naval vessels”, it said.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told journalists in an online briefing that “this precision-guided missile factory was dug in the side of a mountain underground in the area of Masyaf.”
“Most components in fact were sourced from Iran for precision-guided missiles and surface-to-surface missiles,” he said.
The facility had the capacity to manufacture hundreds of missile annually, Shoshani said.
The Observatory said the facility was created and supervised by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Tehran at the time condemned the raid as a “criminal attack”.
The military statement said critical machinery and documents found at the factory were brought to Israel for further investigation.
“The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory,” it said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory, told AFP after the raid that intense air strike preceded the raid, destroying a separate “scientific research centre” in Masyaf used for weapons development, where Iranian experts worked.
Syria, until last month under Iran-backed president Bashar al-Assad, has sought to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which began with the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack and has drawn in Tehran-aligned groups in the region.
Since rebels toppled Assad on December 8, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities in what it says is a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.
In a move widely condemned internationally, Israel also sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights and beyond, describing it as a defensive and temporary measure.
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