The Syrian Defense Ministry said Aleppo airport was damaged by rockets in the third Israeli attack in six months.
An Israeli airstrike has hit Syria’s Aleppo Airport, causing “material damage” in the second attack on the facility this month, the Syrian Defense Ministry said, according to news reports.
Marking the third attack on Aleppo International Airport in six months, Israel fired “a series of missiles from the Mediterranean Sea west of the coastal city of Latakia” (00:55 GMT) at 3:55 a.m. (00:55 GMT), the Department of Defense said in a statement on Facebook early Wednesday.
The Syrian state news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military official, did not mention whether the attack resulted in deaths or injuries. The report says Israeli warplanes fired the missiles at Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once the trade hub, while flying over the Mediterranean Sea, the Associated Press reported.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest attack, Portal news agency reported.
Since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6, killing more than 50,000 people, including more than 6,000 in Syria, Aleppo International Airport has been a key conduit for the flow of humanitarian aid into the country.
Earlier this month, Syrian state media said an Israeli airstrike on Aleppo airport damaged a runway that had been shut down, forcing aid shipments to be diverted to Damascus and Latakia.
This satellite photo released by Planet Labs PBC shows the damage after an Israeli attack on Aleppo International Airport in September 2022 [File: Planet Labs PBC via AP]Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Syria but rarely admits responsibility for them. Israeli officials say the attacks are targeting suspected Iran-sponsored arms caches and personnel.
The attacks are said to be part of an escalation of a low-intensity conflict against what Israel describes as Iran-linked targets in Syria supporting President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that began in 2011.