“Around 4:30 a.m. (0130 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an air assault from the Mediterranean, west of Latakia, against Aleppo International Airport,” the official Sana news agency said, quoting a statement. military sources.
The raid caused “property damage to the tarmac that put the airport out of service”, the agency added. An official from the Syrian Ministry of Transport, Sleiman Khalil, told AFP that “the only operational tarmac at the airport had been damaged”.
“Weapons depots”
“Technical teams will start repairs today so that the airport can become operational again as soon as possible,” he added. The flights were diverted to airports in Damascus, the capital, and Latakia (west), according to him.
Since the beginning of the war in Syria, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory targeting mainly the forces supported by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of Israel, as well as the army Syrian.
Israel, a neighboring country of Syria, rarely comments on the strikes but says it wants to prevent Iran from establishing itself on its doorstep. Asked by AFP, an Israeli military spokesman refused to comment on Monday: “We do not comment on information from foreign media”.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), the strikes on Monday targeted, in addition to Aleppo airport, “arms depots” in the nearby Nayrab military airfield. The Aleppo region and the airport have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli raids since the beginning of the year.
Several strikes since the beginning of the year
In early May, four Syrian soldiers and three foreign fighters from pro-Iranian groups were killed in strikes that then targeted Aleppo airport and other targets, including an arms depot at Nayrab airfield , according to the OSDH. In March, Israeli strikes twice put Aleppo airport out of service. On March 7, three people were killed in a raid that targeted the airport.
Two weeks later, strikes targeted the airport and arms depots of pro-Iranian groups in its surroundings, killing four according to the OSDH, based in the United Kingdom and which has an extensive network of sources. in Syria.
Iran-backed militias have a strong presence in the Aleppo region and provided essential ground support to the Syrian army during the recapture of rebel-held areas of the city in 2016.
The war in Syria, triggered in 2011 by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, has left more than half a million dead and displaced several million people.