Three people, including a Syrian army officer, were killed in the early hours of Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike targeting Aleppo airport in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based non-governmental organization based in wide network of sources in the warring country.

Yesterday, the Syrian Ministry of Defense spoke of an Israeli bombardment of the airport, which put it out of service until further notice, but did not mention any human casualties.

Through this airport, in recent weeks, international humanitarian aid arrived in Aleppo, which was hit hard by the devastating earthquake centered on southern Turkey on February 6, which left behind tens of thousands of dead in both countries.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the victims were a “Syrian officer” and two other people “whose nationality was not specified” by its sources.

The airport, Syria’s second largest, is expected to reopen in a few days after the damage is repaired, the NGO said. Workshops started working a few hours after the bombing.

Yesterday’s raid was the second against the airport in six months. The facility had been out of service for three days after the previous bombing in September 2022, according to official sources.

Earlier yesterday, a source close to the Syrian Ministry of Defense told the official SANA news agency that “the Israeli enemy” launched a raid at 02:07 (local time; 01:07 Greek time) targeting the international airport in Aleppo.

More than 80 humanitarian aid planes have landed at the airport since last month’s earthquake, Suleiman Khalil, an official at the Syrian Transport Ministry, told AFP yesterday.

The same source spoke of material damage on the runway, but noted that no aircraft were damaged.

“It is no longer possible to receive aircraft with assistance until the damage is repaired,” he added.

Later, it was announced by the Syrian Ministry of Transport that the flights with humanitarian aid for the earthquake victims in Damascus and Lattakia will be rerouted.

When contacted by AFP, an Israeli army spokesman said he had no comment to make.

For its part, in a press release published by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it described the attack as a “double crime”, as it targeted a “civilian airport” on the one hand and “one of the main channels for the delivery of humanitarian aid ( …) to the earthquake victims” in Syria.

In Tehran, Iran’s diplomatic spokesman Nasser Kanani called on “responsible international institutions to take immediate and effective measures” against the perpetrators of this “crime against humanity”.

In 2022, Israel intensified its strikes against Syrian airfields, with the aim of preventing Iran from using air means to supply weapons and ammunition to its forces and its allies in Syrian territory and Lebanon, including the Shiite Hezbollah faction.

Since the war in Syria broke out in 2011, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes, the vast majority of them from the air, against positions of the armed forces of the Syrian government and their allies, Iranian and pro-Iranian armed groups, especially Hezbollah.

The Jewish state rarely confirms or publicly comments on the raids it launches, but regularly declares that it has no intention of allowing Iran, its sworn enemy, to build a bridgehead or expand its influence on Syrian territory.

The highly complex war in Syria, involving foreign forces and jihadist groups, has claimed the lives of at least half a million people and uprooted millions more.