AMMAN: Civil aviation officials from Jordan visited Damascus on Wednesday to discuss plans to reopen Syrian airspace to its commercial flights, Jordanian state media reported, in another sign that the country's war is winding down.
Their mission was “to examine technical issues around the possibility of Jordanian commercial flights resuming their use of Syrian airspace,” said Haitham Mistu, the head of Jordan’s civil aviation authority.
Before the conflict broke out in 2011, national carrier Royal Jordanian operated two flights a day to Syria — one to Damascus and one to the northern city of Aleppo.
In July 2012, it suspended the services as an anti-government uprising escalated into full-blown war, placing air traffic at risk.
But Mistu told Jordan’s official Petra news agency that Wednesday’s meetings were part of a risk assessment program, to be followed by a technical evaluation.
“Based on that evaluation, the appropriate technical decision will be taken,” he said, without giving any timeframe.
The meeting was the latest in a series of moves by Arab states to rebuild ties with the Syrian regime as the country’s devastating civil war draws to a close.
Jordan reopened its key Jaber/Nassib border crossing with Syria in October.
On Tuesday, the foreign ministry announced it had decided to appoint a charge d’affaires at the Jordanian embassy in Damascus.
Last month, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir became the first Arab leader to visit Damascus since the start of the war and the UAE became the first Gulf state to reopen its embassy in Damascus.
Syria remains suspended from the Arab League.
The war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government demonstrations.
But since 2015, a series of Russian-backed assaults has put the regime back in control of much of the country.
Jordan officials hold talks in Syria on resuming flights
Jordan officials hold talks in Syria on resuming flights
- Before the conflict broke out in 2011, national carrier Royal Jordanian operated two flights a day to Syria
- Jordan reopened its key Jaber/Nassib border crossing with Syria in October.
A man detonates explosive belt during arrest attempt in Iraq, injuring 2 security members
- The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria
- No members of the security forces were killed
BAGHDAD: A man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up Friday while a security force was trying to arrest him in western Iraq near the Syrian border, killing himself and wounding two security members, an Iraqi security official said.
The raid was being conducted in the Al-Khaseem area in Qaim district that borders Syria, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The official added that “preliminary information” confirms that no members of the security forces were killed, while two personnel were injured and transferred for medical treatment.
Iraq’s National Security Agency said in a statement that its members besieged a hideout of a Daesh group security official and two of his bodyguards. One bodyguard ignited his explosives belt, killing him. It gave no further details.
Daesh once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. The extremist group was defeated on the battlefield in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019 but its sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries.
In December, two US service members and an American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blamed on Daesh. The US carried out strikes on Syria days later in retaliation.
US and Iraqi authorities in January began transferring hundreds of the nearly 9,000 Daesh members held in jails run by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria to Iraq, where Iraqi authorities plan to prosecute them.
