Al-Arabiya sources in Syria reported that Israeli warplanes targeted Aleppo airport on Wednesday evening, to which an Iranian Revolutionary Guards cargo plane had previously arrived, amid reports of casualties due to Israeli bombing around Damascus airport.
Israeli sources reported that the raids aimed to prevent the landing of two Iranian planes in Aleppo.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 4 Israeli missiles targeted a runway at Aleppo International Airport and warehouses in its vicinity, which led to the outbreak of fire and explosions, which are likely to be an Iranian missile shipment.
The Syrian News Agency also reported that the army’s air defenses were responding to an Israeli attack in the sky of Damascus and its countryside, and that it had managed to shoot down a number of them.
The agency also indicated that the Israeli missiles were confronted near the Damascus International Airport road, the Damascus-Daraa highway, and the vicinity of the city of Kiswah, south of Damascus.
Syrian media later confirmed the bombing of Aleppo airport, but said that the damage was “limited to material.” Later, it was reported that Israel’s targeting of the airport runway came before the landing of a cargo plane belonging to the Iranian “Mahan Air”, which was unable to land, and then headed to Damascus Airport, whose surroundings were in turn subjected to Israeli missile strikes.
Last Thursday, a series of Israeli raids targeted Iranian military sites in the governorates of Tartous and Hama, in the center and west of the country. These raids targeted the Military Research Center, Sheikh Ghadban Camp, and other nearby sites in the Masyaf region, 40 kilometers west of the center of Hama in central Syria, where Iranian militias use headquarters, training camps, and stores of weapons and ammunition.