Footage said to show remains of Syria's Al Kibar reactor surfaces

I'll search for coverage of this story.New footage said to show the wreckage of Syria's Al Kibar nuclear reactor has surfaced nearly two decades after Israeli warplanes destroyed the facility, according to reports published this week.

Israel Hayom reported that the material was shared by Asharq (Al Sharq Bloomberg), which said one of its crews reached the remote location near Deir ez-Zor in northeastern Syria to document what remains of the site. Israel Hayom said the footage could not be corroborated independently. According to Israel Hayom's account, a network spokesperson described the visit as the first time in 19 years that a media outlet has documented the ruins.

It was not immediately clear from the reporting when the crew visited the site, and there was no immediate comment from Israeli or Syrian officials on the authenticity of the images.

The strike itself is one of the most heavily documented covert operations in the modern Middle East, though it took Israel more than a decade to claim it. Al Jazeera reported in 2018 that Israeli forces sent eight F-16 and F-15 fighter jets against what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear facility in Deir ez-Zor, roughly 450 kilometres north of Damascus, in an operation lasting about four hours overnight on September 5-6, 2007. Al Jazeera reported that the raid was known as "Outside the Box" within the Israeli military command and that details were kept under an 11-year gag order barring Israeli media from publishing on it.

CNN reported in March 2018 that Israel fully acknowledged the operation to a handful of media organisations at that time, releasing cockpit imagery and a photograph of an F-16 that took part. CNN reported that the reactor was months from completion and that, had it been finished, the facility would have made Syria the first Arab nuclear state. Israel Hayom, in its report on the new footage, said Israel withheld confirmation for a decade in what it described as an effort to avoid escalation and preserve deniability.

Western intelligence assessments have long tied the project to Pyongyang. The Arms Control Association reported that the CIA later identified the bombed structure as a nearly completed reactor secretly under construction since 2001, built with North Korean assistance and modelled on a unit used by North Korea to produce plutonium for weapons. The Nuclear Threat Initiative reported that US officials expressed high confidence the facility was a reactor under construction and assessed with less confidence that its purpose was to produce fuel for a weapons programme, noting they had found no evidence of a reprocessing facility to separate plutonium. NTI reported that US officials also alleged more than a decade of Syrian-North Korean nuclear cooperation. Syria has disputed the claims about the site, according to a summary of the operation compiled on Wikipedia.

The resurfacing of imagery from Al Kibar comes as international inspectors gain access to the site for the first time in years. Yeni Safak reported that Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani announced Damascus had granted the International Atomic Energy Agency access to a location in Deir ez-Zor province for the first time since 2008, and that IAEA chief Rafael Grossi thanked Syrian authorities under President Ahmed al-Sharaa for their cooperation. Yeni Safak reported that Grossi said nuclear material dating to the former government had been found at the Deir ez-Zor facility and that the agency would keep a full inventory of it.

The Times of Israel reported that Shaibani said Syria granted the access on its own initiative, and that Grossi's visit followed an Axios report that Washington and the IAEA had reached an arrangement to remove nuclear material stored at a clandestine Syrian site. The Jerusalem Post, citing Axios, reported that the material was linked to the programme around the al-Kibar reactor, and that Syria's government confirmed it had cooperated with the IAEA, the United States and what it called friendly countries. Israel Hayom quoted Grossi as saying a few tons of nuclear material were at issue and that Syria had decided to open the site to inspectors.

NBC News reported that inspectors have begun excavating at a site believed to be connected to the former government's clandestine programme, and that Syria's top diplomat said Damascus remains interested in a peaceful nuclear programme under international safeguards. NBC News reported that Syria levelled the bombed site afterwards, that inspectors took samples at three locations, and that in 2025 the agency said it had found traces of uranium at one site.

The Arms Control Association reported that IAEA officials first sought access to the Deir ez-Zor site in 2008 and subsequently found Syria non-compliant, and that a newer agreement covers four locations. Whether the newly circulated footage will be authenticated, and what inspectors ultimately recover from the site, remains to be seen.