Syrian state media have confirmed that Damascus International Airport has suffered heavy damage – including runways – following an Israeli rocket attack. The Syrian Ministry of Transport said in a statement on Saturday that the runways remained out of order at the capital’s airport after the attack on Friday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported. “Landing and departure flights have been suspended until recently as a result of the Israeli aggression, as it caused extensive damage to airstrips in many locations and to navigation lights in addition to damage. [that] “It happened in the airport lobby,” SANA said in a statement. The ministry said the flights were expected to resume “in co-operation with air carriers” as soon as the repair work was completed, SANA reported. The airport was targeted by rockets fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights at around 04:20 local time (01:20 GMT) on Friday, state media reported. Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against its neighbor since the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, targeting government troops as well as Iranian-backed allied forces and fighters of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. While Israel rarely comments on individual attacks, it has acknowledged that carrying out hundreds in Syria is necessary to prevent its regional rival Iran from gaining ground on its doorstep. Rarely have such attacks caused long flight disruptions. The Transport Ministry statement was the first to describe the extent of the damage from Friday’s airstrike. “Civil aviation and national companies are working. To repair the extensive damage to the airport,” the ministry said, adding that a terminal building had also been hit. The SANA news agency reported that the Israeli bombing also injured a civilian.
Russian condemnation
Syria’s ally Russia has strongly condemned “the provocative Israeli attack on key civilian infrastructure”. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman described the attacks as “a completely unacceptable violation of international law.” Russia’s military intervention in 2015 helped turn the tide of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Moscow continued to maintain military bases in the country. The conflict in Syria, which lasted more than a decade, began with the brutal crackdown on peaceful protests against al-Assad’s rule, which then escalated, attracting foreign forces and fighters. Nearly half a million people have been killed and about half of the country’s pre-war population has been forced to flee their homes. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke by telephone and also condemned the rocket attack, SANA reported. Syria “will defend itself by all legal means” from Israeli attacks, Meqdad said.
