DAMASCUS: Israeli strikes on Sunday put out of service war-torn Syria’s two main airports, state media reported citing a military source, with the transport ministry saying flights were re-routed to Latakia.
While Israeli strikes have repeatedly caused the grounding of flights at the government-controlled airports in the capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, it is the second time simultaneous strikes have hit the facilities since this month’s conflict between Israel and Hamas began.
“At around 5:25 am (0225 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out... an air attack... targeting Damascus and Aleppo international airports, leading to the death of a civilian worker at Damascus airport and wounding another,” the military source said in the statement carried by state news agency SANA.
“Material damage to the airports’ runways put them out of service,” the statement added. The transport ministry said flights were diverted to Latakia airport.
The military source said the “simultaneous” strikes came “from the direction of the Mediterranean west of Latakia and from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan,” according to the statement.
On October 12, simultaneous strikes knocked both Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service, Syria said at the time.
Last weekend, Israeli strikes targeted Aleppo airport, wounding five people, a war monitor reported, also putting it out of service, according to the authorities.
During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbor, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch foe Iran, which supports President Bashar Assad’s government, to expand its presence there.
Israeli strikes knock out Damascus, Aleppo airports: Syria state media
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Israeli strikes knock out Damascus, Aleppo airports: Syria state media
US will prevent Iranian nuclear bomb ‘one way or the other’
- Implicit threat of miitary action but Tehran remains optimistic of deal
TEHRAN, PARIS: The US will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons “one way or the other,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump “believes firmly we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran,” Wright said as the International Energy Agency met in Paris. “They’ve been very clear about what they would do with nuclear weapons. It’s entirely unacceptable.
“So one way or the other, we are going to end, deter Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon.”
Despite the implicit threat of military action, which Trump has said is not off the table amid a massive increase in US military forces in the region, Iranian officials remain optimistic that an agreement can be reached after talks in Geneva on Tuesday that Tehran described as “constructive.”
In a call with Rafael Grossi, head of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran said was drafting a framework for future talks with Washington. Iran’s focus was on drafting an initial and coherent framework to advance talks with the US, he said. However, US Vice President J.D. Vance said Tehran had not yet acknowledged all of Washington’s red lines.
Earlier on Wednesday Reza Najafi, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN nuclear agency in Vienna, met Grossi and the ambassadors of China and Russia “to exchange views” on the forthcoming session of the agency's board of governors and “developments related to Iran’s nuclear program,” Iran’s mission in Vienna said.
Tehran has suspended some cooperation with the agency and restricted the watchdog's inspectors from accessing sites bombed by Israel and the US during a 12-day war in June. It accuses the UN body of bias and of failing to condemn the strikes.
