LEBANON WARAl Qusayr Destroyed
For years, the Institute for Science and International Security has been following and reporting on the Al Qusayr Underground Facility in Syria, close to the Lebanon border, where construction started as early as 2009 and continued until recently. A few days ago, the site was destroyed in an Israeli attack.
As a result of a contact to one of us by the Washington Post reporter Evan Hill on October 4, 2024, we learned that the Israelis reportedly bombed the Al Qusayr Underground Facility in Syria (close to the Lebanon border) and another nearby site in Lebanon. For years, the Institute has been following and reporting on this site, where construction started as early as 2009 and continued until recently. We decided to seek and analyze post-attack imagery.
Hill also provided X.com reporting on these strikes. Emanual Fabian, a Times of Israel military correspondent, reported early morning October 4, 2024, that “Israeli fighter jets struck a 3.5 kilometer-long tunnel that crossed between Lebanon and Syria, which the IDF says was used by Hezbollah to smuggle Iranian weapons.” 1 He stated that Hezbollah Unit 4400, tasked with delivering weapons from Iran to its proxies in Lebanon, used the tunnel. Fabian added that a “separate overnight strike targeted “infrastructure” at the Masnaa Border Crossing, between Lebanon and Syria, after the IDF said it identified attempts to deliver Iranian weapons to Hezbollah.”
An anonymous person, Samir, @obretix, soon afterwards highlighted on X.com that the distance between the Al Qusayr site and the building destroyed near the Masnaa Border Crossing is slightly over three kilometers. 2
The recent destruction described in Fabian’s reporting can be seen in commercial satellite imagery on October 5, 2024. Imagery showed that the sites were intact during the daytime of October 3rd. Based on a Google Earth derived elevation profile, a tunnel from Al Qusayr to the building in Lebanon is feasible.
Background on Institute Work on Al Qusayr
The Institute’s focus on Al Qusayr resulted from a decision to follow up a 2015 Der Spiegel report stating a nuclear connection with the Syrian Al Kibar reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007. Prior to its destruction, the Al Kibar reactor was an unfinished plutonium production reactor at Al Kibar that was being built with North Korean assistance. An unanswered question after the 2007 bombing was the location and fate of the many tonnes of uranium fuel that North Korea had shipped to Syria for this reactor.
