Yesterday, Saturday, Israeli occupation army tanks destroyed what remained of Gaza International Airport, east of the city of Rafah, south of the Strip, which has been subjected to a devastating Israeli war for more than 7 months.
Eyewitnesses said that Israeli occupation army forces blew up what remained of the airport building located east of the Rafah crossing in an area close to the Egyptian border, which led to its complete destruction.
Israeli media published scenes of the occupation army blowing up what remained of the airport, and a circulating video clip showed an Israeli tank standing in an area close to the airport building before it was blown up and smoke billowed from it.
The military correspondent for the official Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, Roi Sharon, said – through his account on the X platform – attaching the scene of the bombing, “Yasser Arafat Airport in Gaza.”
Gaza International Airport was opened on November 24, 1998, and operated for about two years, before Israel closed it as a punitive measure against the outbreak of the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
In December 2001, the Israeli army destroyed the airport’s radar station and runway, but its apron was not severely damaged at the time.
In January 2002, Israeli bulldozers destroyed the runway into parts. During the Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, Israel bombed the main building of the airport, turning it into rubble.
Since the closure of the airport, residents of the Gaza Strip have returned to using the Rafah crossing, which connects Gaza and Egypt, which was subjected to long periods of closure over the past years, as they travel through the Egyptian Cairo Airport, after passing through the Rafah crossing.
The targeting of the airport comes as part of a military operation launched by the Israeli army in the city of Rafah, last Monday, which caused widespread waves of forced displacement due to the intensity of the fire, despite mounting international warnings regarding the expansion of military operations in Rafah.
Since the seventh of last October, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a continuous and destructive war on Gaza with American support, leaving more than 113,000 martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, which necessitated the trial of Tel Aviv before the International Court of Justice on the grounds of genocide.
