Baghdad: An international report revealed the development of a nuclear reactor in Syria by North Korea and the former government of Bashar al-Assad. The report stated that a former member of the Syrian parliament confirmed that North Korea helped the Syrian regime develop a nuclear reactor.

According to National Iraqi News Agency, Muhammad Barmo, a former member of the Syrian opposition in the north of the country, said before the change of the Assad regime: “The former Syrian regime worked on a project to build a nuclear reactor in Ghab Plain in northwestern Syria, with the help of its allies North Korea and another country.”

The German newspaper Der Spiegel also reported that “Western intelligence agencies” discovered that the Syrian regime was storing 8,000 fuel rods in a secret underground facility connected to the nearby Lake Zeta, through a deep well. According to that report, such a practice was not necessary for a general weapons cache, but it fit the requirements of a nuclear facility perfectly.

The reports stated that the facility was likely used as a site and means of salvaging the nuclear weapons program that was being worked on at Al-Kibar reactor in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor. That reactor, built by the North Koreans, was destroyed by a strike in the Israeli operation to end the program in 2007.

Before that, in 2013, the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington reported that the Syrian regime was storing 8,000 fuel rods in a secret underground facility connected to the nearby Lake Zeta, through a deep well.