Moscow "strongly condemns" Israel's act of aerial aggression against Damascus International Airport and demands that Tel Aviv stop the "vicious practice", Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
"In connection with this [attack], we are forced to reiterate once again that the ongoing shelling of Syrian territory, in violation of the basic norms of international law, is absolutely unacceptable. We strongly condemn Israel's provocative attack on this extremely significant piece of Syrian civilian infrastructure", Zakharova said in a statement Friday.
"Such irresponsible actions create serious risks to international air traffic and put the lives of innocent people in grave danger. We demand that the Israeli side stop this vicious practice", she said.
Zakharova indicated that according to Moscow's information, Friday's pre-dawn attack caused serious damage to Damascus Airport's airfield, and its restoration may require a considerable amount of time, forcing the Ministry of Transport to suspend all flights into and out of the capital.
Friday's bombing was the second time in less than three weeks that Israel has been accused of targeting the airport. On 20 May, Syrian media reported that missiles fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed three people and caused a fire at the facility. Separate strikes carried out in mid-May and late-April are feared to have killed more than a dozen people.
Israel is suspected of carrying out hundreds of airstrikes against its neighbour over the past decade, particularly at the height of the country's foreign-backed civil war between 2013 and 2017, when the Damascus government teetered on the brink of being overthrown by a rag-tag collection of foreign-sponsored Islamist extremists.
The frequency of attacks and their success began to wane somewhat in the latter part of the 2010s, after Russia helped Syria upgrade its air defences and delivered three battalion sets of S-300PM surface-to-air missile systems to the country in response to a deadly Israeli attack which led to the friendly fire shootdown of a Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, killing all 15 airmen on board.
Israeli government and military officials rarely comment publicly on their country's air and missile attacks inside Syria, but have occasionally justified the acts of aggression by pointing to alleged "Iranian" or "Iranian-backed" forces operating in the country. Damascus has made no secret of the support it has received from Tehran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militias in helping to push back the jihadists, and has repeatedly slammed Tel Aviv over its behaviour, saying it has the legal right to station whatever foreign forces it wants to in the country. Syrian officials have also accused their Israeli counterparts of foul tactics, including launching strikes from inside Lebanese territory to increase the risk of a Syrian response causing civilian casualties, and "hiding behind" civilian airliners flying in the area.