CNN: New satellite images show continuing work at Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment plant, which was struck by US B-2 bombers just over a week ago.
The imagery was collected by Maxar Technologies on Sunday. Maxar said it “reveals ongoing activity at and near the ventilation shafts and holes caused by last week’s airstrikes on the Fordow fuel enrichment complex.”
The pictures show “an excavator and several personnel are positioned immediately next to the northern shaft on the ridge above the underground complex. The crane appears to be operating at the entrance to the shaft/hole.”
According to Maxar, several additional vehicles are also seen below the ridge and are parked along the path that was built to access the site.
Earlier this month, American B-2 bombers dropped more than a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites, while Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine hit the Isfahan site in central Iran.
The US Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs targeted the two ventilation shafts at Fordow, according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.
He told a Pentagon briefing last week that most of the bombs dropped at Fordow “were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space.”
Former nuclear inspector David Albright said that imagery from Fordow on Saturday showed “the Iranians are actively working at the two MOP impact sites penetrating the ventilation shafts” at the plant.
Albright assessed that the activity “may include backfilling the craters, as well as conducting engineering damage assessments and likely radiological sampling. The craters above the main shafts remain open.”
