Israeli Dolphin-class submarines carried out a July
5 attack on an arms depot in the Syrian port city
of Latakia , according to a report in the British
Sunday Times, which contradicted a previous
CNN report that the attack was the work of the
Israel Air Force.
The alleged Israeli naval strike was closely
coordinated with the United States and targeted a
contingent of 50 Russian-made Yakhont P-800
anti-ship missiles that had arrived earlier in the
year for Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime,
the Times cited Middle East intelligence sources as
stating.
According to the report, the Israeli fleet of
German-built submarines launched a cruise
missile at the weapons cache after which Syrian
rebels reportedly attested to hearing early-
morning explosions at a Syrian port-side naval
barracks.
On Friday, anonymous US officials told CNN that
Israel had carried out an air strike on the Syrian
city.
Three unnamed US officials told CNN the IAF had
targeted Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles
that could pose a threat to Israel.
Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free
Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council, said the
pre-dawn attack hit Syrian Navy barracks at
Safira, near the port of Latakia. The rebel forces’
intelligence network had identified newly supplied
Yakhont missiles being stored there, he said.
“It was not the FSA that targeted this,”
Saadeddine told Reuters. “It is not an attack that
was carried out by rebels. This attack was either
by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats
in the Mediterranean.”
A loud explosion was heard near Latakia on
Wednesday, an opposition monitoring group
said, but the cause of the blast was unclear.
Explosions in Latakia, part of Assad's stronghold
on the Mediterranean coast, have been extremely
rare during Syria's two-year-old conflict.

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