According to Syria’s state news agency SANA, an Israeli airstrike on the Damascus International Airport on Sunday night briefly shut it down, killed two troops, and injured two more.
According to a military source cited by SANA, Israel launched an air attack around 2 a.m. with “barrages of missiles, targeting Damascus International Airport and its surroundings.”
It stated that the strike resulted in “the deaths of two troops… forcing the closure of Damascus International Airport.”
Both of the runways at the airport in Damascus were shut down as a result of the attack, according to an official announcement from the Syrian aviation authorities.
The airport will reopen at 9:00 a.m., according to a later statement from the Syrian Ministry of Transportation, after officials had cleared “damage inflicted by the Israeli aggression” and made repairs to damaged sites.
The Israel Defense Forces, which often does not confirm such raids on an individual basis, made no comments.
In June of last year, airstrikes blamed on Israel hit Damascus International Airport, seriously damaging and closing the main runway. After renovations, the airport reopened two weeks later.
There have also been reports of strikes at the airport in prior years.
On Iranian cargo airlines, which routinely land at Damascus International and the Tiyas, or T-4, airbase, west of the central Syrian city of Palmyra, it is believed that relatively heavy weapons are generally smuggled via Syria.
After that, it’s thought that the weapons were kept in nearby warehouses until being transported by truck to Lebanon.
Syria claims that Israel has repeatedly bombed the Aleppo International Airport in recent months.
Although Israel’s military generally declines to comment on particular attacks in Syria, it has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of sorties against organizations supported by Iran that are striving to establish a presence there.
According to the IDF, it also targets shipments of weapons thought to be headed for these organizations, most notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Furthermore, Syrian air defense systems have frequently been the target of assaults ascribed to Israel.
The most recent attacks in Syria attributed to Israel were on December 19 and 20, when various targets in the Damascus region were purportedly bombed and a covert Hezbollah drone facility close to the northwest Syrian city of Homs was reportedly targeted.
