Syria. Aleppo Airport Destroyed by Israeli Airstrike, Media Reports

The attack happened around 2 a.m. local time. According to the SANA agency, the runway was damaged, which prevents the operation of the airport. It added that Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles fired from the Mediterranean Sea, west of the port city of Latakia.

There is no information about the victims so far.

Reuters points out that Israel recently stepped up attacks on Syrian airfields to prevent Iran delivering weapons to his allies by air Syria and Lebanon, including the radical organization Hezbollah.

The city of Aleppo, badly damaged during the Syrian civil war, recently experienced another tragedy – a powerful earthquake that struck southern Syria last month Turkey and northwestern Syria. Many countries sent aid shipments to the victims of the disaster through the Aleppo airport, notes Al Jazeera.

For almost a decade, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria aimed at either Iranian arms shipments or forces deployed in a neighboring country via Tehran. Rarely, however, did the Israeli authorities admit to these operations, Al Jazeera noted.

Military analysts cited by the Saudi station say the airstrikes that have targeted Syrian airports and airbases in recent months are a sign of an escalation of Israeli efforts to slow down the consolidation of Iranian influence in Syria.

According to Western intelligence sources, Iran, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has increased its military presence in Syria in recent years and has a foothold in most government-controlled areas. Moreover, Tehran has under its control many local paramilitary groups operating in Syria. Iranian militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now control large areas of eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and several suburbs around the capital, Damascus, Al Jazeera reports.