Syria Says Israel Strike Puts Damascus Airport Briefly Out of Service

This photo released on June 12, 2022 by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows a damaged portion of the Damascus International Airport, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on June 10, in Damascus, Syria. (SANA via AP, File)
This photo released on June 12, 2022 by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows a damaged portion of the Damascus International Airport, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on June 10, in Damascus, Syria. (SANA via AP, File)
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Syria Says Israel Strike Puts Damascus Airport Briefly Out of Service

This photo released on June 12, 2022 by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows a damaged portion of the Damascus International Airport, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on June 10, in Damascus, Syria. (SANA via AP, File)
This photo released on June 12, 2022 by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows a damaged portion of the Damascus International Airport, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike on June 10, in Damascus, Syria. (SANA via AP, File)

The Syrian army said on Monday an Israeli missile strike had briefly put the Damascus International Airport out of service, the latest in a string of strikes targeting Iran-linked assets. 

A volley of air-launched missiles had hit the airport at 2 a.m., the army said in a statement. They had come from the direction of Lake Tiberias in Israel. 

Missiles had also hit targets in the south of Damascus, killing two members of the Syrian armed forces and causing some damage, the army said. 

The transport ministry said in an online statement that workers had removed debris from the strikes and that flights would resume by 9 a.m. 

Earlier, two regional intelligence sources said the strikes had hit an outpost near the airport of Iran's Quds Force and militias it backs. Their presence has spread in Syria in recent years. 

The Israel Defense Force did not immediately comment on the attack. 

Last year, Israel intensified strikes on Damascus International and other civilian airports to disrupt Tehran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah. 

Syria halted flights to and from the airport in June for nearly two weeks after Israeli strikes caused extensive damage to infrastructure, including a runway and a terminal. 

Israel fired missiles at Damascus International again in September, when it also struck the country's second-largest civilian airport in the northern city of Aleppo, putting it out of operation for several days. 

Western and regional intelligence sources say Tehran has adopted civilian air transportation as a more reliable means of ferrying military equipment to its forces and to allied fighters in Syria, following Israeli disruption of ground supply. 

Israel says its so-called "campaign between wars" in Syria began a decade ago, on Jan 30, 2013, with a strike against Russian-supplied SA-17 air-defense batteries that Damascus had intended to hand over to Hezbollah. 

Four such strikes took place that year, but the pace had accelerated to around one a week currently, the chief of Israel's armed forces, Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi, said last month. 

Iran's proxy militias, led by Lebanon's Hezbollah, now hold sway in vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital. 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on his behalf in Syria's war, saying Tehran has only military advisers on the ground. 

Kohavi last month claimed credit for an air strike on a convoy that had entered Syria from Iraq, saying the target had been a truck carrying Iranian weaponry. 



One Person Killed in Israeli Gunfire in South Lebanon

The rubble of a collapsed building is pictured following Israeli bombardment, in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on June 21, 2026. (AFP)
The rubble of a collapsed building is pictured following Israeli bombardment, in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on June 21, 2026. (AFP)
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One Person Killed in Israeli Gunfire in South Lebanon

The rubble of a collapsed building is pictured following Israeli bombardment, in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on June 21, 2026. (AFP)
The rubble of a collapsed building is pictured following Israeli bombardment, in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on June 21, 2026. (AFP)

One person was killed by Israeli gunfire in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, Lebanon's Civil Defense and ‌a security ‌source said, ‌in ⁠the latest deadly ⁠incident to occur despite a US-brokered ceasefire last week ⁠between Israel and armed ‌group ‌Hezbollah.

Israeli soldiers ‌opened fire ‌at a group of people near a bulldozer ‌clearing a road in the ⁠al-Deir ⁠neighborhood of Nabatieh al-Fawqa in southern Lebanon, Lebanon's state news agency NNA reported.


UN Probe: Israel's 'Deliberate Targeting' of Children Part of Ongoing Gaza 'Genocide'

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Raghad Hassan Ashour, 16, during her funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital after she was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Monday June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Raghad Hassan Ashour, 16, during her funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital after she was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Monday June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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UN Probe: Israel's 'Deliberate Targeting' of Children Part of Ongoing Gaza 'Genocide'

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Raghad Hassan Ashour, 16, during her funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital after she was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Monday June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Raghad Hassan Ashour, 16, during her funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital after she was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Monday June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children in what has become a key factor in an ongoing "genocide" in Gaza, United Nations investigators charged on Tuesday, in a report slammed by Israel.

According to AFP, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that "Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces.”

This, it said, was a key factor in establishing "the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza.”

The three-member investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report last September that Israel had committed "genocide" in the war in Gaza -- a finding Israel flatly rejected.

In Tuesday's follow-up report, they said the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations had continued, resulting in the "unprecedented" death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.

There were "reasonable grounds" to conclude that Israel's authorities and security forces "have continued to commit the crime of genocide" in Gaza, they said.

Israel, which has long been harshly critical of the commission, slammed the report as "defamatory" and a "libelous sham.”

It accused the investigators of ignoring "the brutal tactics of Hamas, which ruthlessly attacks Israeli children and uses Palestinian children as human shields.”

The commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, examined for its latest report crimes affecting Palestinian children, and how living conditions imposed by Israel in Gaza were "resulting in preventable mortality of children.”

"Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and war crimes in the West Bank," the team said in a statement.

The commission said that severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare had "erased childhood" in Gaza and would continue to affect the territory's children throughout their lives.

"By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future," said Indian judge Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chairs the inquiry.

"Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured."

The report comes days after the UN children's agency UNICEF said at least 265 children had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Gaza since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect.

UNICEF said children had been shot, bombed and struck by quadcopters, killed in tents, in schools and while playing football or fishing.

The Hamas October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory response in Gaza has killed more than 72,800 people, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The UN inquiry said that during the first two years of the war at least 20,179 children were killed and 44,143 injured "as a direct result of the hostilities in Gaza.”

The killing and maiming of Palestinian children "was part of a strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian group in Gaza", it said.

By targeting children, the report said, "Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality.”

Israel was responsible for causing a "severe orphan crisis,” while wounded youngsters "face a lifetime of disability" -- now "a defining demographic reality" among Gaza's children, it said.

The siege of Gaza "directly undermined reproductive and newborn health,” while the collapse of public health programs "eroded the conditions necessary for a healthy next generation.”

The report listed Israeli divisions, brigades and units that may be responsible for killing children, in specific incidents in Gaza and the West Bank.

Besides Gaza, the commission also documented a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

The commission urged all UN member states, including Israel, to ensure accountability for crimes committed.


Russian Delegation, Libya’s GNA Discuss Investment Opportunities

The visit aimed to review the economic and investment potential offered by the free zone and the opportunities available for cooperation and partnership. Photo: Misurata Free Zone
The visit aimed to review the economic and investment potential offered by the free zone and the opportunities available for cooperation and partnership. Photo: Misurata Free Zone
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Russian Delegation, Libya’s GNA Discuss Investment Opportunities

The visit aimed to review the economic and investment potential offered by the free zone and the opportunities available for cooperation and partnership. Photo: Misurata Free Zone
The visit aimed to review the economic and investment potential offered by the free zone and the opportunities available for cooperation and partnership. Photo: Misurata Free Zone

Libyan officials have discussed with a high-ranking Russian economic delegation mechanisms to strengthen investment and trade cooperation, as well as the reactivation of the Libyan-Russian joint committee.

Chairman of the Management Committee of the Misurata Free Zone (MFZ) in Libya Mohsen Al-Suqutri met on Monday with Russia’s Ambassador to Libya, Aydar Aganin, in the presence of Libya’s ambassador to Moscow, Emhemed Almaghrawi.

The visit aimed to review the economic and investment potential offered by the free zone and the opportunities available for cooperation and partnership.

The Russian delegation included several businessmen, as well as heads and representatives of companies and institutions active in industrial, commercial, investment, and scientific research sectors.

The Russian ambassador praised the strategic geographic location of the Misurata Free Zone, considering it an important hub connecting regional and international markets, and highlighting its attractiveness for investment in light and heavy industries and other sectors.

Both sides discussed opportunities for economic and investment cooperation and the possibility of establishing partnerships and projects that would contribute to boosting economic development and expanding areas of collaboration between the two countries.

The Minister of Transport and financial adviser to the prime minister in the Government of National Unity (GNA), Mohamed Al-Shahoubi, met with the Russian economic delegation in Tripoli.

The meeting was attended by several ministry officials, the Libyan and Russian ambassadors, as well as representatives from the ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation.

The meeting addressed several issues of mutual interest, particularly in the sectors of transportation, infrastructure, and logistics services. It also explored opportunities for economic and investment cooperation that would serve shared interests and strengthen the partnership between the two countries.

The two sides also discussed mechanisms for reviving the Libyan-Russian joint committee, in a way that would help advance cooperation and activate agreements and memoranda of understanding previously signed between Libya and Russia.

The conferees stressed the importance of continued coordination, consultation, and exchange of expertise in support of development efforts, and to enhance the transport sector and economic relations between the two states.