Other Names: As Safirah, Al Safir, Safiyah, Aleppo, facility name unknown.
Location: 36°02'02"N by 37°21'03"E. Located on a ridge one kilometer south of the village of Al Safira in northern Syria. Al Safira itself is approximately 20 kilometers south east of the city of Aleppo.
Subordinate to: Syrian government, CERS (?)
Size: Satellite images of this combined missile and chemical weapon production facility show the entire complex to cover a four by eight kilometer area. It is believed that the production facility is underground, making estimation of its size difficult. Although Syrian chemical weapons production facilities have generally been described as small, the Al-Safira facility has been referred to as one of the world's largest chemical warfare plants. This assessment may be intended to refer to functioning chemical weapons production facilities.
Primary Function: Chemical weapons production facility, chemical weapons storage facility, underground storage and launch facility for Scud-C and -D missiles.

Description:
Early reports of this facility were confused, variously describing it as being located in Aleppo or Al-Safira. It appears that this facility was constructed in the mid- to late 1980s, along with the bulk of Syria's chemical warfare infrastructure. Discussion of the construction of a facility near Al-Safira in the mid-1990s should probably be regarded as representing the modification or expansion of the existing facility. It has been claimed that the funds for this facility were provided by Saudi Arabia.

Key Sources: "Syria's secret poison-gas plants," Economist Foreign Report, 10 September 1992, pp. 1-2; Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg, "The Dogs of War," Jerusalem Post, 13 June 1996, p. 6; Global Security, "Syrian CW facilities: Al-Safir," <http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/al-safir.htm>.

	Updated November 2003