The image also shows what appears to be a channel which may have once been filled with pipelines running from a water pumping station to the suspected reactor building.

Albright said Syria may have levelled the area quickly because the Israeli raid destroyed the roof, leaving the contents of the buildings open to spy aircraft and satellites.

He said the fact that a roof was built so soon over the new building suggests that it was a reactor being built with the help of North Korea.

"From what we understand, North Korea builds reactors in an old-fashioned way; the roof goes on early."

More modern reactors leave the roof until last to allow large cranes to lift heavy equipment into place, he said.

Inconclusive images

James Acton, specialist in nuclear affairs at Kings College, London, told Al Jazeera that while the images suggested a nuclear reactor had been at the surveyed site, they were not conclusive.

"If it was a nuclear reactor it was only at an early stage of construction. The images are not definitive and they do not prove that it was a nuclear reactor, but there are some strong resemblances to one," he said.

Acton said that the dimensions of the building surveyed by the commercial satellite were similiar to those of a reactor building in North Korea, but added that this did not fully prove involvement from Pyongyang.

He said: "The evidence that the North Koreans have supplied Syria with a reactor is fairly circumstantial at the moment… [the images] are is not conclusive evidence."

Earlier commercial images taken by SPOT Image, another commercial imagery company, suggested that building work at the suspected reactor site had been going on for at least a year, Albright said.

Syria, a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently has one small nuclear research reactor that operates under international safeguards.