OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
A reporter for Israel's mass-selling Yediot Aharonot daily recently visited the area in Syria where Israeli warplanes carried out an apparent air attack, the newspaper claimed on Wednesday.
"This is where the Israeli planes attacked," said the front-page headline in the daily next to a photograph of its reporter, Ron Ben-Yishai, standing in front of a sign reading "Deir Ezzor Research Station" in Arabic and English.
The paper did not say how its military affairs correspondent managed to enter Syria, which is officially in a state of war with Israel.
There is no specific evidence to prove the alleged infiltration into Syria and Damascus has so far not released a reaction to the Israeli papers claims.
Deir Ezzor is where, according to foreign media reports, Israeli warplanes bombed a secret military facility that allegedly contained nuclear material from North Korea -- reports denied by both Damascus and Pyongyang.
In his report, Ben-Yishai quotes local residents as saying that they heard planes fly over the area on the night of September 5-6.
"There were a few Israeli planes here that made supersonic booms over the city and maybe even dropped something. We didn't hear any explosions on the ground," Ben-Yishai quoted a resident as saying.
In a separate story, Yediot quoted anonymous military sources as saying that Syria had raised the state of alert for its military along the armistice line with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in recent days.
Syria has said that its air defenses fired on Israeli planes that had dropped ammunition deep inside its territory on September 6 and has lodged an official complaint over the incident with the United Nations.
Damascus has released no further details of the strike and Israel has maintained an official wall of silence over the incident. |
