DHAKA: The Pentagon has announced that within the coming hour it will release information about the reported missile firings in the Mediterranean Sea.

Earlier on Tuesday, agencies quoted Israeli military sources as saying Israeli and American naval forces had fired two missiles from the Central Mediterranean to a target area in the East Mediterranean.

The US Navy said its ships had not been involved, reports The Voice of Russia.

Israel said it carried out a test of a missile, used as a target in a US-funded anti-missile system, in the Mediterranean on Tuesday.

The Israeli defence ministry pointed out that they tested an ‘anchor’ target missile used to check how well the anti-missile system known as ‘Arrow-2’ functions.

Israeli authorities said that Israeli defence ministry and the American MDA (Missile Defence Agency) conducted the test Tuesday morning at 9:15am (06:15 GMT), about the same time that Russia’s state-run RIA news agency reported that Russian radar had detected the launch of two ballistic ‘objects’ in the Mediterranean.

‘The test was launched from the Mediterranean and directed from an army base in the centre of Israel,’ Israel’s defence ministry said in a statement.

The statement mentioned only one missile.

Moscow’s defence ministry, as cited by Russian news agencies, said its early warning system had detected the launch of two ballistic missiles from the central part of the Mediterranean fired towards the Sea`s eastern coastline on Tuesday morning.

The launches of two ballistic targets in the Mediterranean, detected by the Russian early warning system, might have been the so-called ballistic dummies, or training targets for air defense crews, said an informed source in Moscow.

‘Destroyers of the US Sixth Fleet might have launched the so-called ballistic dummies or air defence training targets, in order to check readiness of the Syrian air defence systems and of the Russian early warning radar systems deployed in the Mediterranean,’ he said.

BDST: 1941 HRS, SEPT 03, 2013
RoR/RK