Israel's military launched a rocket attack on Damascus International Airport on Monday, January 2, killing four people including two Syrian soldiers, according to a UK-based human rights monitoring group.
This is the second time in less than seven months that Israel has targeted the Damascus airport, which is home to armed groups backed by Iran and Libyan Hezbollah fighters.
The attack disabled operations at the country's main airport, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.
Israel launched an attack "with barrage missiles, targeting Damascus International Airport and the surrounding area," a military source told SANA, which reported that two Syrian soldiers were killed.
But the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria, said a total of four people were killed in the early morning attack.
"Four fighters, including two Syrian soldiers, were killed in an Israeli strike," Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Observatory, told AFP.
The missiles also hit "the positions of Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside and around the airport, including a weapons depot," Abdul Rahman said.
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against its neighbor, targeting government troops as well as allied forces backed by Iran and fighters from the Libyan Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
While Israel rarely comments on its strikes, it reiterates that it will not allow its arch-enemy Iran to gain a foothold in Syria.
The attack on Monday, January 2, comes days after the head of the Israel Defense Forces' Directorate of Operations, Major General Oded Basiuk, presented the military's operational goals for 2023.
"We see that our course of action in Syria is an example of how continuous and persistent military action leads to shaping and influencing the entire region," the IDF tweeted about Basiuk's presentation. "We will not accept Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria".
The airport is located in a region south of Damascus where Iran-backed groups, including Hezbollah, regularly operate.
The last time the airport did not work was in June 2022, also after an Israeli rocket attack.
The Observatory said at the time that the attacks targeted nearby warehouses used by Iran and Hezbollah as weapons depots.
The conflict in Syria began with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to involve foreign powers and global jihadist groups.
About half a million people were killed, and the conflict forced about half of the country's pre-war population to flee their homes.
Although hostilities have largely subsided over the past three years, sporadic fighting breaks out occasionally and jihadist attacks continue, mainly in the east of the country.
Syria had its lowest annual death toll in 2022 since the conflict began more than a decade ago.
At least 3.825 people died in the war in Syria in 2022, according to figures compiled by the Observatory, down from 3.882 the previous year.
Among those killed in 2022 were 1.627 civilians, including 321 children, the Observatory said.
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