Israeli Air Assault Didn't Destroy All Syrian Antiship Missiles: Report
An early July air attack by Israel on a stockpile of Syrian cruise missiles missed a couple of the weapons, which means the Bashar Assad regime likely still retains some ability to threaten U.S. and Israeli warships that might seek to intervene in the ongoing civil war, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The airstrike on the Russian-manufactured Yakhont antiship missiles was carried out on July 5 against a Syrian military warehouse not far from Latakia. U.S. intelligence researchers have determined that some portion of the weapons had been taken off of their launchers and withdrawn from the depot prior to the strike.
Damascus attempted to conceal the fact that not all of the Yakhonts had been destroyed by igniting the missiles' supporting machinery at the warehouse to give the illusion of a catastrophic strike, U.S. intelligence found.
