Syria’s Aleppo airport resumes flights for 1st time in years

ALEPPO, Syria — A Syrian commercial flight lands at Aleppo airport from Damascus, marking the resumption of internal flights between Syria’s two largest cities for the first time since 2012.

The flight carrying Syrian officials and journalists us a symbolic message from President Bashar Assad’s government, days after its forces consolidated control over the northwestern province of Aleppo and seized the last segments of the strategic M5 highway linking Aleppo to Damascus. The motorway between Syria’s two biggest cities is being repaired and is scheduled to reopen in coming days, for the first time in eight years.

Backed by heavy Russian airstrikes, government forces have been on the offensive for weeks to recapture the Aleppo countryside and parts of neighboring Idlib province in northwestern Syria, the last rebel-held areas in the country.

In this photo released February 18, 2020 by the Syrian official news agency SANA, a YAK-40 plane is parked on the Aleppo Airport apron, in Aleppo province, Syria. (SANA via AP)

The advances have sent hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians fleeing towards the border with Turkey in one of the biggest single displacements of the war, now in its eighth year. Escaping the bombs, many of them left with their belongings piled up on vehicles and are now staying in tents, in open fields and under trees in freezing temperatures near the Turkish border. The UN has put the number of those displaced since December 1 at more than 900,000 civilians — more than half of them women and children.

— AP