Russia Tells Israel To Stop Airstrikes Near Damascus Airport

Russia said to tell Israel to stop airstrikes near Damascus Airport

The Russian government has reportedly asked Israel to halt its airstrikes against Iranian targets near the Damascus airport, the pan-Arab al-Quds al-Araby reported on Friday.

According to the report, Russian military officials said Moscow was preparing to renovate the airport that has been damaged in the eight years of fighting in the Syrian civil war. The unnamed officials said the Israeli strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in the vicinity of the airport were causing foreign airlines to reconsider resuming flights to the Syrian capital.

The report came as Israeli and Russian militaries on Thursday completed a series of meetings aimed at improving relations between the two armed forces, following the downing of a Russian spy plane by Syrian air defenses, which Moscow blames on Israel.

A delegation of senior Russian military officers visited Israel for the discussions, which were led on the Israeli side by the head of the IDF’s Operational Division, Brig. Gen. Yaniv Assur, who previously served as commander of the IDF division that defends the Syrian border. “The delegations reached understandings and agreed on continued collaboration,” the IDF said in a statement.

Israel in recent years has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria against targets linked to Iran, which alongside its proxies and Russia is fighting on behalf of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A number of the strikes have targeted the Damascus airport in a bid to halt weapons transfers from Iran to its militias in Syria and Lebanon.

Israel has accused Iran of seeking to establish a military presence in Syria that could threaten Israeli security and attempting to transfer advanced weaponry to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.

The reported Russian request followed less than a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke with longstanding Israeli policy and publicly acknowledged the IDF was behind a raid in Syria days earlier. The strike destroyed a number of weapons caches in the Damascus airport, Netanyahu said.