WASHINGTON - Syria has cleared away all traces of a large building that experts say was bombed by Israeli jets last month because it was suspected of housing a partially finished nuclear reactor, according to a new satellite image that shows only freshly groomed dirt at the site.
The tall, boxlike building visible in aerial photographs before the Sept. 6 bombing raid has been dismantled down to the last brick, the image taken Wednesday by a commercial satellite service shows.
Nuclear weapons experts who studied the photo sequence said the starkly different images indicate that Syria must have moved quickly to hide what remained after the site was bombed.
"They are clearly trying to hide the evidence," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit nuclearresearch group that was the first to publicly identify the facility as the apparent target of the Israeli raid. "It is a trick that has been tried in the past, and it hasn't worked."
The original building, slightly larger than a baseball diamond, was in Syria's eastern desert near the village of At Tibnah, about 90 miles from the Iraqi border and a few hundred yards from the Euphrates River. Some U.S. officials and nuclear experts said the building closely resembled structures associated with a North Korean reactor capable of producing enough nuclear material for one bomb per year.
Syria previously acknowledged that Israel had bombed what it called a military target inside its borders but led reporters to a different location.
The Israeli government and the White House have maintained a policy of official secrecy regarding the nature and location of the facility struck by the Israeli jets.
Front Section, Pages 9 on 10/26/2007