The UN nuclear agency on Thursday said for the first time that a target destroyed by Israeli warplanes in the Syrian desert five years ago was a covertly built nuclear reactor, countering assertions by Syria that it had no atomic secrets to hide.
Previous reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency have suggested that the structure hit could have been a nuclear reactor. Thursday's comments by IAEA chief Yukiya Amano were the first time the agency has acknowledged that the structure was in fact the construction site of a nuclear reactor.
He made them during a news conference meant to focus on the Fukushima nuclear disaster after a visit to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to discuss clean-up efforts at Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant.
Israel has never publicly commented on the strike or even acknowledged carrying it out.
Syria denies allegations of any covert nuclear activity or interest in developing nuclear arms. Its refusal to allow IAEA inspectors new access to the bombed Al Kibar desert site past a visit four years ago has heightened suspicions that it had something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and later build over it.
