An Israeli strike targeting a Syrian airport tore a hole in the runway and also destroyed a nearby tarmac, as well as a structure on the military side of the airport, satellite images revealed. The attack on Aleppo International Airport on Wednesday night came as an Israeli strike just months earlier took out the runway at the country’s main airport in the capital, Damascus, targeting Iranian arms shipments into the country. Syria’s state news agency SANA acknowledged Wednesday’s attack, without giving details of damage or what was hit. Satellite photos taken Thursday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed vehicles clustered around the site of one of the raids on the airport, near the western end of its single runway. The attack tore a hole in the runway and set fire to the grass at the airport. Just south of the runway, debris was strewn after another strike that hit an object on the tarmac and another structure. An Israeli strike targeting a Syrian airport tore a hole in the runway and also destroyed a nearby tarmac and a structure on the military side of the airport [Planet Labs PBC/AP] Syria, like many Middle Eastern states, has dual-use airports that include civilian and military parts. Flights at the airport have been suspended since the attack. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed immediately after the strike that Israel had targeted a shipment of Iranian missiles at Aleppo airport. Iran, as well as its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah group, have been crucial to keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power since a war broke out in his country amid the 2011 Arab Spring. Shortly before the strike, a transponder on an Antonov An-74 cargo plane flown by Iran’s Yas Air, under approval since 2012 by the US Treasury Department for flying weapons on behalf of Tehran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, briefly crashed near Aleppo, according to flight-tracking data. The altitude and location suggest the plane was planning to land in Aleppo. Cargo aircraft over Syria often do not transmit location data. A phone number listed for Yas Air rang unanswered on Friday. The Iranian and Syrian missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press. Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against its neighbor since war broke out in Syria in 2011, targeting government troops as well as allied forces backed by Iran and Hezbollah fighters. While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, it has acknowledged that carrying out hundreds in Syria is necessary to prevent regional rival Iran from gaining ground on its doorstep. He did not immediately acknowledge Wednesday’s strike. Such attacks rarely caused major flight disruptions. The blow comes as tensions in the wider Middle East remain high as negotiations over Iran’s scrappy nuclear deal with world powers hang in the balance. Israel, which has carried out numerous strikes in Syria in its shadow war with Iran in the wider Middle East, has not directly acknowledged Wednesday’s strike. [Planet Labs PBC/AP]
