Israeli attack puts Syria’s Aleppo airport out of service: Report
Syrian state media say Israeli missile strikes damaged the runway at Aleppo International Airport.
Israel has carried out an airstrike on Syria’s Aleppo airport, damaging and decommissioning the runway, Syrian state media said.
According to the SANA news agency, the rocket attacks took place early Tuesday morning.
Citing a military source, SANA said Israel “carried out an airstrike from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, targeting Aleppo International Airport.” SANA said the raid “caused material damage” to the airport and “put it out of service”.
It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.
There was no comment from Israeli officials.
Widely devastated during the Syrian civil war, the city of Aleppo was severely damaged again by the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria last month. A number of countries have since sent relief shipments to the city’s airport.
For nearly a decade, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes against suspected Iranian-sponsored arms transfers and personnel deployments in neighboring Syria, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
The raids, which have targeted Syrian airports and airbases in recent months, are part of an escalation of a low-intensity conflict aimed at slowing Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, military analysts say.
Iran, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years, maintaining a foothold in most of the state-controlled areas and thousands of members of militias and local paramilitary groups under its command, according to Western intelligence sources. .
Iranian proxy militias, led by the Lebanese Hezbollah, now rule much of eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and several suburbs around the capital Damascus.
On February 19, Israeli airstrikes targeted residential areas in Damascus, killing at least five people and injuring 15, according to Syrian state news.
On January 2, the Syrian army said the Israeli army fired rockets into the capital’s international airport, taking it out of service and killing two soldiers.