By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 59 minutes ago, just updated
Aleppo Airport, Syria, February 19, 2020. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
Very early on Monday morning, property damage was noticed on the roadway.
An Israeli bombardment shut down the airport in Syria’s second largest city early on Monday (August 28), official Sana news agency reported, citing a military source.
“Around 4:30 a.m., the Israeli enemy launched an airstrike from the Mediterranean Sea west of Latakia on Aleppo International Airport, causing “material damage to the runway that rendered the airport inoperative,” Sana added. A Syrian Transport Ministry official, Sleimane Khalil, told AFP that “the only operational taxiway at the airport was damaged”.
Hundreds of strikes since 2011
Since the start of the war in Syria, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory, mainly targeting Iran-backed and Lebanese Hezbollah-backed forces, Damascus allies and arch-enemies of Israel, and the Syrian army.
Israel, a neighboring country to Syria, rarely gives specific details on the attacks, but says it wants to prevent Iran from establishing itself on its doorstep. The Aleppo region, where groups linked to Iran and its allies have a strong presence, and the airport have been the target of Israeli attacks on several occasions since the beginning of the year.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), four Syrian soldiers and three foreign fighters from pro-Iran groups were killed in attacks in early May that then targeted the airport and other targets, including an arms depot. In March, Aleppo Airport was shut down twice by Israeli attacks. The war in Syria, sparked by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, has left more than half a million dead and several million displaced.