BEIRUT: Israeli missile strikes on the Syrian capital’s airport on Monday killed four people including two soldiers and closed the runways for several hours, a rights monitor said.

This is the second time in less than seven months that Damascus International Airport has been hit by Israel. The attack around 2am (2300 GMT) put the airport out of service until 9am, Syria’s state news agency SANA and officials said.

Israel carried out the strike with “barrages of missiles targeting Damascus International Airport and its surroundings”, a military source told SANA, which reported that two Syrian soldiers were killed and two others wounded.

But the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “four fighters, including two Syrian soldiers, were killed”. Head of the group Rami Abdul Rahman said the missiles also hit “positions for Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside the airport and its surroundings, including a weapons warehouse”.

Flights later resumed after repairs of “the damage caused by Israeli aggression”, Syria’s transport ministry said in a statement.

“Air traffic has returned after we restored work on one of the runways, while the process of repairing the second runway continues,” transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil said.

The last time the airport was out of service was in June 2022, also after an Israeli strike. The runway, control tower, three hangars, warehouses and reception rooms were then badly damaged, forcing the airport to close for about two weeks and flights to be suspended.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2023