Israel's Interior Security Minister Amar Bar-Lev revealed on Tuesday that an Israeli soldier had been killed in covert operation in Syria 38 years ago.
The details of the incident have been under a strict gag order since that time, reported Israel's Ynetnews.
During an interview on the Kan Bet radio channel, Bar-Lev revealed that in December 1984, Israel conducted a sensitive operation in the depths of Syria during which one of his former commanders, Sgt. Barak Sharabi, was killed.
Sharabi’s resting place has been kept under wraps to this very day due to national security concerns.
The Military Censorship later demanded the minister’s interview be removed, but later agreed to affirm that the covert operation indeed took place inside Syria, reported Ynet.
Sharabi - according to the Yizkor website commemorating fallen Israeli soldiers - enlisted in October 1981 to the military flotilla, but later volunteered for Sayeret Matkal, a reconnaissance and commando unit.
A few years ago, censors allowed media to report that Sharabi was killed during an "intelligence operation in a neighboring Arab country."
Yizkor initially said he was killed during the "First Lebanon War" in December 1984.
In an interview conducted a few years ago, Sharabi’s parents said that they were informed that their son had been killed in a car accident.
At his funeral, though, very senior military officials were present, who later told them in secret about the operation in which he participated and apparently killed, reported Ynet.
