Missile strike disables Damascus airport
The Syrian army says an Israeli missile strike had briefly put the Damascus International Airport out of service, the latest in a string of strikes targeting Iran-linked assets.
A damaged portion of the Damascus International Airport was hit by an Israeli airstrike on June 10, in Damascus, Syria. Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of the capital Damascus early Monday, Jan. 2, 2023 putting it out of service, the Syrian army said. (SANA via AP, File)
A volley of air-launched missiles hit the airport at 2am on Monday, the army said in a statement. They had come from the direction of Lake Tiberias in Israel.
The army said that missiles also hit targets in the south of Damascus, killing two members of the Syrian armed forces and causing some damage.
The transport ministry said in an online statement that workers had removed debris from the strikes and that flights would resume by 9am.
Earlier, two regional intelligence sources said the strikes had hit an outpost near the airport of Iran’s Quds Force and the militias it backs. Their presence has spread in Syria in recent years.
The Israel Defence Force did not immediately comment on the attack.
Last year, Israel intensified strikes on Damascus International and other civilian airports to disrupt Tehran’s increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.
Syria halted flights to and from the airport in June for nearly two weeks after Israeli strikes caused extensive damage to infrastructure, including a runway and a terminal.
Israel fired missiles at Damascus International again in September, when it also struck the country’s second-largest civilian airport in the northern city of Aleppo, putting it out of operation for several days.
Western and regional intelligence sources say Tehran has adopted civilian air transportation as a more reliable means of ferrying military equipment to its forces and to allied fighters in Syria following the Israeli disruption of ground supply.
Israel says its so-called “campaign between wars” in Syria began a decade ago, on January 30, 2013, with a strike against Russian-supplied SA-17 air-defence batteries that Damascus had intended to hand over to Hezbollah.
Four such strikes took place t hat year, but the pace had accelerated to around one a week currently, the chief of Israel’s armed forces, Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi, said in December.
Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now hold sway in vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on his behalf in Syria’s civil war, saying Tehran has only military advisers on the ground.
Kohavi last month claimed credit for an air strike on a convoy that had entered Syria from Iraq, saying the target had been a truck carrying Iranian weaponry.
AAP
