Video: 'Operation Opera - Israel's Raid on the Iraqi Reactor 1981'

(Sunday, June 7, 1981, 6:55 p.m. Arabia Standard Time; during Operation Opera, part of the Arab–Israeli conflict) — Israeli planes today bombed and destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor 11 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, that the Israeli government said would have enabled Iraq to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin justified the action as having been essential to prevent the “evil” President Saddam Hussein of Iraq from attacking Israeli cities with atomic bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

The airstrike reportedly killed ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian.