Satellite image shows shuttered Aleppo airport after fresh raid attributed to Israel
Syrian foreign ministry accuses Israel of ‘war crime’ following second airstrike against runway in northern Syria in under a week
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
An Israeli satellite company and intelligence firm published images Wednesday showing damage at Aleppo International Airport in northern Syria following an airstrike attributed to Israel the previous night.
Tuesday night’s strike against the airport was the second in under a week, after bombings blamed on Israel last Wednesday targeted the airport’s runway and radio navigation system.
Syria’s Transportation Ministry announced Tuesday night that all flights were being redirected to the Damascus airport, as the Aleppo airport was “out of service” following the airstrike.
ImageSat International (ISI) said the recent airstrikes targeted three locations along the runway.
Last week’s strike only hit one section of the runway, shortening its length to prevent large planes from landing.
The image published Wednesday showed that repairs were already underway. The damage from last week’s airstrike was repaired within 48 hours, according to ISI.
Syria’s foreign ministry accused Israel of a “war crime according to international law” over the latest airstrikes.
“Israel must be held to account for it,” a foreign ministry statement said, according to the Reuters news agency.
There were no reports of injuries in the latest attack.
Syria, like many Middle East nations, has dual-use airports that include civilian and military sides.
Aleppo is a major city in northern Syria, near its border with Turkey, and is an uncommon — though not unprecedented — target for reported Israeli airstrikes.
As a rule, Israel’s military does not comment on specific strikes in Syria, but has admitted to conducting hundreds of sorties against Iran-backed groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country. It says it also attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for those groups, chief among them Lebanese Hezbollah.
Earlier this year, airstrikes attributed to Israel caused major damage to the Damascus International Airport, halting all air traffic for two weeks.
Generally, relatively large weapons are thought to be smuggled via Syria on Iranian cargo airlines, which frequently land at Damascus International and the Tiyas, or T-4, airbase, outside of the central Syrian city of Palmyra.
The weaponry is then believed to be stored in warehouses in the area before being trucked to Lebanon.
