( Gulfnews ) The fatal attack on a politician in Lebanon came amid rising tension between Israel and Syria over allegations that Damascus is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Jane's Defence Weekly reported on Wednesday that 15 Syrian military personnel and an undisclosed number from Iran had died when an attempt to fit a chemical weapon warhead to a Scud missile ended in a massive, accidental explosion.
Syria had said that an explosion at a military installation in Aleppo on July 26 was conventional and caused by unexpectedly high outside temperatures.
But, quoting unnamed Syrian defence sources, Jane's reported that the explosion happened as Iranian technicians were teaching Syrian counterparts how to fit a mustard gas warhead to a Scud C missile.
Volatile rocket fuel ignited in a laboratory where the rocket was being worked on and the force of the blast was so great that it blew up a neighbouring storage facility for chemical weapons. "The blast dispersed chemical agents across the facility and outside," a source said.