Aleppo International Airport returned to service on Friday morning, three days after an Israeli strike hit the runway, according to an official in the Syrian Ministry of Transport, told AFP.

Since the devastating earthquake that struck Syria and neighboring Turkey on February 6, Aleppo International Airport has been used as a major station for planes transporting humanitarian aid that flowed into Syria from several countries to provide relief to the affected areas.

Following the Israeli strike at midnight Monday-Tuesday, which affected the landing strip, relief aid planes and other flights were diverted to Damascus and Latakia airports in the west of the country.

"The airport has been operating since eight o'clock in the morning and is ready for any landing after we have repaired all the damage," Suleiman Khalil, official of readiness at the Ministry of Transport, told AFP.

A source at the airport, in turn, stated that there are no flights on the airport's schedule on Friday, despite its return to service, indicating that the first flight is supposed to arrive on Saturday.

The Syrian Ministry of Defense had reported that the airport had been hit by an Israeli strike that put it out of service, but without announcing any deaths.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that three people, including a Syrian officer, were killed in an Israeli missile that landed near the airport.

Suleiman Khalil told AFP on Tuesday that Aleppo airport had received more than 80 aid planes after the earthquake.
The UN Resident and Acting Humanitarian Coordinator, Sura Al-Mustafa Benmelh, said in a statement that the airport's closure as a result of the raid "caused an impediment to the arrival of humanitarian aid and could have dire humanitarian consequences for the people affected by the earthquake."

Over the past years, Israeli strikes targeted Aleppo International Airport several times, putting it out of service last September for several days.

This is the second time that Israeli strikes targeted areas in Syria after the earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Syria and Turkey, including about 6,000 in Syria.

On February 19, 15 people were killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted a residential neighborhood in Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Over the past years, Israel launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria, targeting Syrian army sites and Iranian and Hezbollah targets, including weapons and ammunition depots in separate areas.

Israel rarely confirms the implementation of strikes in Syria, but it repeats that it will continue to confront what it describes as Iran's attempts to consolidate its military presence in Syria.

Syria has been witnessing a bloody conflict since 2011, which has killed about half a million people, caused massive damage to infrastructure, and led to the displacement of millions of people inside and outside the country.