Japan: Secret Syrian-Iranian-NKorean missile-test fails, kills 20 Syrians
Japanese intelligence has learned that in late May, Iran, Syria and North Korea secretly test-launched in southern Syria a new short-range ballistic missile developed jointly by Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus as a substitute for the outdated Scuds still in use in their armed forces, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.
In May, several new missiles were flown from North Korea and Iran to the Damascus military airfield and thence to Syria’s southeastern missile-testing site at Jebel Druze near the small town of Salakhand.
After two weeks’ preparation, two of the new projectiles had their first trial-launch - and failed with disastrous results.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that they targeted an uninhabited desert area in the North, 500 kilometers away, just south of Ayn Diwar and east of Al Qamishli not far from the Syrian-Turkish-Iraqi border intersection.
(It was here that Syria and Iraq, with Russian help, interred Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in 2001.)
However, one of the missiles strayed