Mortar Shells Fall near Damascus Airport, Flights Movement Normal

Minister of Transport, Mahmoud Saeed, denied media reports which claimed that an Iraqi airplane was hit and a number of passengers onboard it were injured by mortar shells fired by terrorists which fell in the surrounding of Damascus International Airport on Thursday.

The Minister described in a phone call with the Syrian TV the news circulated by some media outlets as “extremely exaggerated”, explaining that a mortar shell fell near the rear of the runway, “which made us delay for a while the landing of two planes that were expected to arrive coming from Lattakia and Kuwait.”

“A few minutes later, the two planes landed safely without any problem,” Saeed said, affirming that the two planes were Syrian and that no Iraqi plane was there.

“On the contrary, a Syrian plane was scheduled to take off towards Iraq…which was postponed for half an hour,” he added.

The Minister went on saying that a number of workers were slightly injured due to the falling of some sheets of glass windows of a warehouse where the shell hit.

“This is exactly what happened at the airport,” said Saeed, stressing that the flights movement is normal and all passengers at the airport are safe and that the workers are accustomed to working under such circumstances.

Earlier, Operations Director at the Airport, Tareq Wahiba, stressed that the takeoffs and landings are running normally, pointing out that all planned flights took off according to schedule.

He added that the airport also received all scheduled flights as usual.