ISRAELI special forces are operating in Syria as spotters to track the regime’s stocks of chemical and biological weapons. The cross-border operation is part of a secret war to trail Syria’s non-conventional armaments and sabotage their development.

“For years we’ve known the exact location of Syria’s chemical and biological munitions,” an Israeli source said, referring to the country’s spy satellites and drones. “But in the past week we’ve got signs that munitions have been moved to new locations.”

Western intelligence agencies have monitored Syria’s weapons programme since the late 1980s when its stocks of biological and chemical weapons were first reported.

The programme was led by Anatoly Kuntsevich, a Russian scientist, who died on a flight from Damascus to Moscow in 2003. Another Russian, Yuri