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Satellite images taken before and after a raid on an Iranian military facility in Syria earlier this month reveal the precision and limited scope of the airstrikes, Channel 10 reported Sunday.
The images obtained by the channel show the charred remains of a single hangar at the Tiyas airbase, with the surrounding area relatively unaffected.
Iran, Syria, Russia, and some US officials have all said that Israel was responsible for the strike on the base, also known as T-4. Israel has not commented.
According to the TV report, the pre-dawn rain on April 9 attack was carried out with “surgical precision,” and was limited to the arsenal of Iranian weapons stored at the airbase outside the city of Palmyra.
“[The raid] was a barrage of small explosives designed to destroy the contents of the hanger, but not damage unintended targets,” Channel 10 said.
The April 9 strike killed 14 people, including at least seven members of the Revolutionary Guards, of which one was the head of its drone program, Col. Mehdi Dehghan.The strikes did not appear to target Russian military equipment or Syrian anti-aircraft systems that were also at Tiyas.
This was the second time the base was struck. Israel acknowledged hitting the base in February after Iran flew an explosive-laden drone into Israel. Israel says the drone was launched from the base.
The IDF said in February that it bombed “four Iranian targets that are part of Iran’s military establishment in Syria.”
This included a mobile command center on the T-4 military, from which an Iranian operator allegedly flew the drone that entered Israeli territory, according to the IDF.One F-16 fighter jet was hit while flying over Syria during the raid, but managed to return to Israel, where its two pilots bailed out of the plane, which crashed into a field in the Jezreel Valley.