The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a secret raid to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran inside Syria prior to the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli military censors revealed on Thursday.
The declassified photos and videos of the operation, which involved over 100 Israeli commandos from the elite Shaldag (“Kingfisher”) unit, went viral in Israel.
In a statement, the IDF said:
On September 8th, 2024, during a special operation by the Israeli Air Force, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.
For years, the Intelligence Directorate conducted extensive intelligence gathering and monitoring, confirming the value of the target. In the months leading up to the operation, a plan was launched for the Israeli Air Force to destroy it.
The soldiers landed using helicopters, with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets, and naval vessels of the Israeli Navy. The raid’s target was an underground compound deep in Syrian territory, funded and supported by Iran. The compound was a flagship project for Iran’s efforts to arm its terror proxies on Israel’s northern border. The compound included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets, significantly increasing the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
During the operation, the forces reached critical machinery for manufacturing precision missiles, including a planetary mixer, numerous weapons, and intelligence documents, which were transferred for investigation. The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory.
The IDF will continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “I salute our heroic fighters for the daring and successful operation deep in Syria. This was one of the most important preventive operations that we have taken against the efforts of the Iranian axis to arm itself in order to attack us; it attests to our boldness and determination to take action everywhere to defend ourselves.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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