BEIRUT: Israeli airstrikes on Sunday made Damascus airport inoperable just hours after flights had resumed following a similar attack last month, a war monitor said, as state media also reported the attack.
“Israeli warplanes on Sunday afternoon carried out a new raid targeting Damascus international airport … putting it out of service again,” said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It said the raid targeted the runways, and reported the sound of an explosion from the direction of a military airport elsewhere in the capital.
A military source said in a statement that at around 4:50 p.m. Israel carried out an air attack with missiles from “the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan.”
The raid targeted “Damascus international airport and some points in the Damascus countryside,” putting the airport out of service and causing “some material losses,” it said.
Air defenses “destroyed most” of the missiles, the statement added.
Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on its northern neighbor since Syria’s civil war began in 2011, primarily targeting Iran-backed militants as well as Syrian army positions.
But it has intensified attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7.
Israeli strikes on Damascus airport and Aleppo airport in the north on Oct. 12 and Oct. 22 put both facilities out of service.
Two ticketing offices in the capital had said flights had resumed from Damascus on Sunday, and local media also reported the resumption, but authorities had yet to make an official announcement.
Flights were re-routed to Latakia on the west coast after the Oct. 22 strikes.
Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran, which backs President Bashar Assad’s regime, to expand its presence there.
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