JERUSALEM, April 25: Israel put a new spy satellite into service from Russia on Tuesday which will increase the levels of surveillance of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The satellite was launched from a military space launch site in Russia’s far eastern Amur region aboard a Topol solid-fuel rocket booster, the ITAR-TASS news agency said, quoting a spokesman for the facility, Alexei Kuznetsov.

In a brief item posted on its website, the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot quoted an unnamed defence official as saying the satellite would be used to spy on Iran’s nuclear activities.

ITAR-TASS said the satellite is fitted with a powerful camera ‘which will permit Israeli intelligence to observe important Iranian targets in the most minute detail’.

The D33 Eros B1 satellite was successfully placed into orbit about 20 minutes after its launch, the agency said.

The satellite was launched by ImageSat, a company that is part-owned by state-run Israel Aircraft Industries.

ImageSat said the 280-kg satellite is able to spot objects of no more than 70 centimetres long.

“As soon as this satellite goes into orbit, it will place us in the major leagues of countries with photography satellites,” ImageSat director general Shimon Eckhaus told Yediot Aharonot.

The Eros B is an upgraded versions of the Eros A satellite which is already in operation.

Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said this week that Iran represented an existential threat to the survival of the Jewish state.—AFP