An Israeli air attack has hit Syria’s Aleppo airport causing some “material damage” in the second strike on the facility this month, the Syrian defence ministry has said, according to news reports.
Marking the third attack on Aleppo International Airport in six months, Israel launched “a number of missiles from the Mediterranean Sea, west of the coastal city of Latakia, at 3:55 am” (00:55 GMT), the defence ministry said early on Wednesday in a statement on Facebook.
Syrian state news agency SANA, quoting an unnamed military official, did not mention if the strike caused any deaths or injuries. The report said that Israeli warplanes fired the missiles toward Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial centre, while flying over the Mediterranean, the Associated Press reported.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest attack, Reuters news agency reported.
Aleppo International Airport has been a major channel for the flow of humanitarian aid into the country since a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6, killing more than 50,000 people, including more than 6,000 in Syria.
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Earlier this month, Syrian state media said that an Israeli air raid on Aleppo airport had damaged a runway, which was taken out of service forcing the rerouting of relief supplies to Damascus and Latakia.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air attacks against Syria but rarely admits responsibility. Israeli officials say the attacks are aimed at suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons dumps and personnel.
The attacks are said to be part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict against what Israel describes as Iran-linked targets in Syria that support President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, which started in 2011.