Syrian state media say Israel hit the airports in Damascus and Aleppo again, putting them out of service for the second time within two weeks amid its relentless bombing of Gaza.
The SANA state news agency said on Sunday that Israeli air raids targeted the two main airports, “leading to the death of a civilian worker at Damascus airport and wounding another”.
“Material damage to the airports’ runways put them out of service,” it quoted an unnamed military source as saying in a statement.
Flights have been diverted to the airport in the port city of Latakia, the Syrian Ministry of Transport said in a statement.
Israeli air raids have repeatedly targeted the two airports in the past, causing flights to be grounded and inflicting human casualties and material damage, but this is the second time simultaneous strikes have hit the facilities since the beginning of Israeli bombardment of besieged Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attacks inside Israel that have killed more than 1,400 people.
Israeli bombardments have killed about 4,400 people in Gaza, according to the latest figures, with many victims being women and children.
Simultaneous air raids hit the airports in both cities on October 12, with Syria saying they knocked out the two at the time as well.
Israeli strikes targeted the Aleppo separately last weekend as well. A war monitor reported that the attack also put the airport out of service and wounded five people.
Earlier this month, a drone attack hit a military college in Syria’s Homs province, which according to a war monitor killed more than 100 people.
Israel launched the first air strikes on the two main airports in Syria shortly after the start of the war as it is concerned about new fronts being opened in the deadly conflict.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official had previously said Israel remains concerned that Iran could be utilising the airports to move military assets and use them against it.
Iran has repeatedly warned that the resistance fighters it supports across the region could strike Israel, expanding the scope of the war, if Israel refuses to stop targeting civilians in Gaza, who have been left without water, fuel and medicine for the majority of the duration of the war.
The first shipments of humanitarian aid trickled into Gaza on Saturday as Egypt temporarily opened the Rafah crossing after Israeli approval.
