Israeli commandos carried out raid on secret weapons site in Syria

WASHINGTON — Israel carried out a commando raid in Syria on Sunday that obliterated a Hezbollah missile production facility near the Lebanese border, killing a number of people at the site, according to U.S. and other Western officials.

The operation included a daring raid by Israeli special forces, who rappelled down from helicopters and apparently seized materials from the missile facility, the officials said. Ground forces were used in the attack because of its complexity and to recover information from the secret weapons site, the officials said, adding that there were no Israeli casualties.

The officials said the raid included airstrikes on the sprawling site, the Scientific Studies and Research Center, which is near Masyaf, in the country’s northwest.

Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported Monday that 18 people were killed and dozens more injured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain that tracks the conflict in Syria, said the strikes hit an area containing a scientific research institute where work on developing short- and medium-range precision missiles is conducted.

Israel has declined to comment on the raid.

Israel notified senior U.S. officials before conducting the strikes. On Sunday, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, visited the underground war room of the Israeli military’s Northern Command, where he was presented with the military’s operational plans for Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.

Independent experts, Israeli officials and the U.S. government have described the institute in Syria as a center of weapons research and development, aided by the country’s ally Iran. Chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons are developed there, as are missiles used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militia group in Lebanon that is fighting Israel.

Israel has struck Masyaf, about 25 miles from the Mediterranean coast, several times in the past. In 2018, Israel assassinated a Syrian scientist who worked at the facility developing precision-guided munitions.

The airstrikes late Sunday and early Monday amounted to one of the deadliest attacks in Syria in months. SANA said that in addition to the 18 dead, 37 people were injured in the strikes, including six who were in critical condition. The agency said that roads and water, power and telephone infrastructure were damaged.

Although the facility has, in the past, been associated with chemical weapons production, there was no such work being done there in recent years, officials said.

But the facility was making precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah, which some government analysts feared would allow the group to strike targets more accurately in northern Israel.

Writing in the “Syria Weekly” Substack, Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, offered more details about the Israeli operation.

Lister said that an initial round of Israeli airstrikes destroyed at least four Syrian military positions around Masyaf, including an air defense site.

A second round of strikes hit a building in the complex that connects to underground tunnels, he said.

In the operation’s third phase, Lister said, several Israeli helicopters crossed into Syrian airspace and dropped off several dozen Israeli commandos on the outskirts of the bunkers.

As the Israeli soldiers advanced on the bunkers, Israeli drones attacked Syrian military troops who were rushing to the scene, he said.

Officials briefed on the operation said the main goal of the ground assault was to destroy the facility, which could not have been done with an airstrike alone. An important secondary objective, officials said, was to collect intelligence about Hezbollah’s weapons development.

Lister said the facilities in Masyaf and in the neighboring town of Mahruseh have been central to Syria’s development of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, barrel bombs and thermobaric munitions, weapons with special explosive mixtures typically used to destroy buildings and tunnels.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.