UN nuclear watchdog finds uranium particles at Syria site

The UN atomic watchdog has discovered uranium particles in Syria during a probe into a site it suspects once housed a nuclear reactor, according to a confidential report seen by AFP on Tuesday.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has urged Syria to cooperate fully over allegations that it had been building a covert nuclear reactor at a remote desert site called Deir Ezzor - which Israel destroyed in a bombing raid in 2007.

The probe has lasted for years, with the IAEA saying in a 2011 report it was "very likely" that a building at the Deir Ezzor site "was a nuclear reactor which should have been declared" to the agency.

Syria, whose longtime authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December last year after 14 years of civil war, has repeatedly denied it was constructing a nuclear reactor.