Israeli missile strikes on the Syrian capital’s airport Monday killed 4 individuals together with two troopers and closed the runways for a number of hours, a rights monitor mentioned.

This is the second time in lower than seven months that Israel has hit Damascus International Airport — the place Iranian-backed armed teams and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters are current.

The assault round 2:00 am (2300 GMT) put the airport out of service till 9:00 am, Syria’s state information company SANA and officers mentioned.

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

But the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria, said “four fighters including two Syrian soldiers were killed”.

The missiles additionally hit “positions for Hezbollah and pro-Iranian teams contained in the airport and its environment, together with a weapons warehouse”, mentioned Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory.

The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the strike in a statement, calling on the UN to “take urgent measures to punish those responsible”.

It described the strike as “nothing greater than one other episode of Israeli crimes”, decrying the “targeting of Syria and its people”.

Flights later resumed.

“Air visitors has returned” on one of the runways, “while the process of repairing the second runway continues,” transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil informed AFP.

Since civil struggle broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out a whole bunch of air strikes in opposition to its neighbour, focusing on authorities troops in addition to allied Iran-backed forces and fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

The Israeli military, which mentioned Monday that “it doesn’t remark on international reviews”, has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch foe Iran to gain a foothold in Syria.

Israel’s hawkish veteran Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in again on Thursday as head of what analysts call the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

A day earlier, the head of the Israel Defense Forces Operations Directorate, Major General Oded Basiuk, presented the military’s “operational outlook” for 2023, the place he mentioned that the drive “won’t settle for Hezbollah 2.zero in Syria”, the army said on Twitter.

“Our course of action in Syria is an example of how continuous and persistent military action leads to shaping and influencing the entire region,” Basiuk added.

The following day, Israel’s navy chief Aviv Kohavi gave a speech through which he famous “the armies Iran is making an attempt to determine all through the Middle East” as one of the facets of Tehran’s threat to Israel.

“The most important thing to us is the entrenchment, not just through proxies, but through arms, infrastructure, the Iranians are trying to set up in the area near us, primarily in the Syria-Lebanon region”, Kohavi mentioned.

The airport is in a area southeast of Damascus the place Iran-backed teams, together with Hezbollah, frequently function.

The final time the airport was out of service was in June 2022 — additionally after an Israeli missile strike.

The runway, management tower, three hangars, warehouses and reception rooms have been badly broken in that assault — forcing the airport to shut for about two weeks and flights to be suspended.

Just as in Monday’s assault, the Observatory mentioned on the time that the strikes had focused close by warehouses used as weapons depots by Iran and Hezbollah.

The battle in Syria began with the brutal repression of peaceable protests and escalated to drag in international powers and world jihadists.

About half 1,000,000 individuals have been killed, and the battle has pressured round half of the nation’s pre-war inhabitants from their houses.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is printed from a syndicated information company feed)