While the main target of the attack on Wednesday appears to have been SA-17 missiles and their launchers which the Israelis feared were about to be moved to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon video shown on Syrian television appears to back up assertions that the research center north of Damascus was also damaged. That complex, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, has been the target of American and Western sanctions for more than a decade because of intelligence suggesting that it was the training site for engineers who worked on chemical and biological weaponry.
A senior United States military official, asked about reports that the research center had been damaged, said, My sense is that the buildings were destroyed due to the bombs which targeted the vehicles carrying the antiaircraft weapons, and from the secondary explosions from the missiles. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence reports, said that the Israelis had a small strike package, meaning that a relatively few fighter aircraft slipped past Syrias air defenses and that targeting both the missiles and the research center would risk doing just a little damage to either. They clearly went after the air defense weapons on the transport trucks, the official said.
There is still much that is not known about the attack, and there have been contradictory descriptions of it since it was carried out. Initial reports suggested that the antiaircraft missiles were hit near the Lebanese border. Subsequent reports, both in Time magazine and the Israeli press, suggest there were multiple attacks conducted at roughly the same time. The Israelis had been silent on the issue until Sunday, when Ehud Barak, the departing Israeli defense minister, gave the first indirect confirmation of the attack at a security conference in Munich. While Mr. Barak said he could not add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria, a moment later he referred to the events as another proof that when we say something we mean it.
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