TEL AVIV – Satellite images released by an Israeli company Tuesday showed the destruction of a building in a deadly airstrike said to have been carried out by Israel on a Syrian airfield earlier this week.

The strike on Sunday night targeted Al-Nayrab airbase, adjacent to Aleppo’s international airport, some 250 kilometers (215 miles) from the border with Israel. The facility has in the past been identified as a base for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Satellite image from July 17, 2018, showing the damage caused by an alleged Israeli airstrike on an airbase near Aleppo, Syria. (ImageSat International ISI)

Reports about the damage inflicted and what kind of building was destroyed were conflicting.

“The Zionist enemy (Israel) … targeted with its missiles one of our military positions north of the Nayrab military airport, but the damage was only to property,” Syria’s SANA said citing a military source.


Satellite image from July 17, 2018, showing the damage caused by an alleged Israeli airstrike on an airbase near Aleppo, Syria. (ImageSat International ISI)

Syrian rebel forces claimed that 22 people, including nine Iranians, were killed in the strike, Al-Jazeera reported Monday.

That claim contrasted significantly with reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor that said nine people — six Syrians and three others whose nationality was not made known — were killed.

Satellite image from July 17, 2018, showing the damage caused by an alleged Israeli airstrike on an airbase near Aleppo, Syria. (ImageSat International ISI)

One report said the industrial building that was damaged may have been used to store weapons, possibly a new shipment of advanced weapons bound for Iranian forces operating in Syria. Another said the building was a vehicle workshop.

The Observatory said it was doubtful that the airfield was being used to store weapons. Instead, it was a pit stop to provide equipment and food to the Assad regime forces fighting nearby.

Israel allegedly targeted the base on April 29 as part of a large-scale strike on dozens of terror targets in Syria.

As per longstanding policy, Israel did not comment on the raids.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Moscow last week that Israel would not interfere with the Assad regime so long as it is free to act against Iran.