Syria: Damascus airport reopens after operations were suspended following Israeli strike that killed four

A missile strike by the Israeli army on Damascus International Airport on Monday has left four people dead, including two Syrian soldiers, according to a human rights monitor. The Syrian army said that the strike hadput the airport out of service. The airport later reopened at 9 am local time, Syria's state news agency SANA reported. It is the latest in a string of strikes targeting Iran-linked assets.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitoring group, reported that the Israeli raids hit the airport as well as an arms depot close to the facility.

The missiles hit the airport at around two am local time and came from the direction of Lake Tiberias in Israel, the army said in a statement.

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Israel carried out the strike with "barrages of missiles, targeting Damascus International Airport and its surroundings", a military source told SANA.

While the agency said two Syrian soldiers were killed in the attack, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rightssaid a total of four people had died.

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The group receives its information from a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria.

"Four fighters including two Syrian soldiers were killed" by the Israeli strike, Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Observatory, told AFP.

The missiles also hit "positions for Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside the airport and its surroundings, including a weapons warehouse", Abdul Rahman said.

Israel intensified strikes on Damascus International and other civilian airports last year with the aim to disrupt Tehran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.

The operations at the Damascus airport had to be halted for two weeks in June after Israeli strikes caused extensive damage to infrastructure, including a runway and a terminal.

The airport was under attack again in September, along with the country's second-largest civilian airport in Aleppo, putting it out of operation for several days.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011 hundreds of air strikes have been carried out by Israel against its neighbour in which government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and fighters from Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah have been targetted.

The Israel Defence Force has not said anything on the attack yet. However, the country has bombed Iran-backed militia targets in Syria in recent years, saying that it will not allow Iran to gain a foothold in the country.

Monday's strike comes days after the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Major General Oded Basiuk, presented the army's operational outlook for 2023.

"We see that our course of action in Syria is an example of how continuous and persistent military action leads to shaping and influencing the entire region," according to tweets by the IDF on Basiuk's presentation.

"We will not accept Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria."

(With inputs from agencies)

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